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[Road Kill]
Plot:Four young friends on a camping adventure in outback Australia are run off the road by a mystery road train - a massive three-trailer truck. With their own 4x4 wrecked and the road train stopped, the friends march off to remonstrate with the driver. But there is no one to be found! Suddenly, the silence is broken by the sound of gunshots. A distant figure screams and runs towards them. Are they witnesses to a murder? There's no time to discuss it. The friends commandeer the road train. The next town is only three hours away. But the next town is somewhere they will never reach. What they discover inside the vehicle's trailers proves more terrifying than anything out there on that lonely road.
Cast:Xavier Samuel,
Sophie Lowe,
Bob Morley,
Georgina Haig.
My Thoughts:Better than previous Aussie horror's.
Review:"Road Kill" follows a group of teenagers on the usual "Outback" road trip. They soon encounter a giant tractor trailer on the road, which they call a "Road Train". For some reason, they seem excited by the vehicle and it's large, intimidating size. But the vehicle's driver soon becomes aggressive, and bumps the teens vehicle. It later runs them off the road entirely, injuring one of them severely. The group then decides to confront the driver of the massive vehicle, when it parks atop a nearby hill.
And that's when the real terror begins. "Road Kill" isn't a terrific horror movie by any means, but it's better than previous Aussie horror films. "Rogue" was average, "Wolf Creek" was just bad, and "Cut" from way back in 2000, well...it's old news. "Road Kill" seems to take it's genre cue's from past horror films such as "The Mangler", and the indie horror flick "Blood Car". The movie does make one good decision though, which is making the whole mystery surrounding the truck into a dark, mysterious, and supernatural issue.
Not to give away anything, but lets just say "Road Kill" is NOT, another "Joy Ride". Which is a good thing in the end, because the crazed trucker/driver genre has gotten a bit stale with "Joy Ride", it's sequel "Dead Ahead", two "Rest Stop" movies, and the tons of forgettable thrillers released straight to DVD, which involve the same story arc. "Road Kill" however does not get the character formula correct. These teenagers are annoying, intolerable, and skeevy as well.
The film not only gives us characters that are paper-thin in substance and development, but they are also not very good people on the inside. There's an underlying theme between the group involving the whole "All Is Fair In love And War" edict, and it not only gets annoying when it's stretched way past it's limits story-wise, but it also gets annoying when it's focused on so heavily.
There comes a point in the film where the characters decide to board the truck, a huge mistake that later on proves to be. But even after that poor decision, despite finding themselves deeper in terror and distress, they still seem focused on who's screwing who, so to speak. And how many times can we really have the jealous girl/slimeball boy/good girl who falls for bad boy love triangle thing done in a horror film? I counted this as time number 5,000 that it's been done.
And it's been done to death quite frankly. Especially in Aussie horror films, which seem for some reason to overplay their hand with this sort of thing. "Road Kill" doesn't have genuine scares as much as it should. But it's well directed, and has some creepy, trippy, and weird moments which give it that "Twilight Zone" kind of feel in many aspects. The film only works when the truck itself, is the focus of the story.
The truck, and the mystery behind it. But once the film dares to try and focus on the characters, or any of these peoples alleged acting skills, that's when the trouble comes in. This is one of those horror films where the machine, and what's on the DVD box cover should dominate the movie. The characters granted, need dialogue. But not too much screentime outside of the machine. "Maximum Overdrive" did this well enough, making the movie 90% about the trucks, while having the human characters throw around profanities everytime they were shown on screen.
Had this movie worked itself more that way, it would've turned out better than it did. The films blood and gore levels are awfully scarce which is another problem. It's a movie about a weird truck, where's the splatter scenes of someone getting mowed down at top speed? Where are the chase sequences? etc, etc.? There was a lot that could've been done with this movie, and a lot that was missing. In the end, "Road Kill" wraps up with a decent ending, but by the time it's all over, you feel unfulfilled.
You kind of wish it wasn't an indie, so that it could've had more money for 3 gruesome deaths, some better actors, and maybe some more background on it's metallic menace, aka the Road Train. Instead, "Road Kill" does a hack job on what could've been an intriguing man versus machine picture.
Positives:The truck is the star of this movie, and every scene it's in and focused upon works perfectly creating a feleing of suspense, creepiness, eerieness, and terror.
Negatives:The characters are poorly developed and their love triangle schtick gets old quickly. Also there are no super/hyper-gruesome deaths to speak of. Totally unacceptable in a movie like this.
Overall:One and a half out of four stars.
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