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[The Reeds]
Plot:A weekend boating party turns into a nightmare for a group of young Londoners when they stumble upon a terrifying secret hidden in the reeds.
Cast:Scarlett Alice Johnson,
Geoff Bell,
Emma Catherwood,
Will Mellor,
Anna Brewster,
Daniel Caltagirone,
O.T. Fagbenle,
Scarlett Sabet,
Reece Chapman,
Karl Ashman,
James Marriot,
Natai Pauwels.
My Thoughts:Oh those pesky reeds.
Review:"The Reeds" is part of After Dark's 4th annual horrorfest, and is also a British genre production. The movie follows a group of young Londoners who rent a boat to take out on the water for some private party fun. Things get creepy really fast though as they run into a group of kids who don't seem to say much, and on top of all of that, are pretty creepy-looking.
One of them being a red-headed girl, who seems to be the leader of the entire weird pack. Once the group of young people take the boat out on the water, they soon come under attack from supernatural forces, which reside within the reeds. This movie does some things right, such as the "Evil Dead" camera-zoom work when it comes to the scenes where the spirits attack the boat.
They come zooming at the vessel, and that gives the film a somewhat creepy vibe, and also makes it thrilling in some ways. The boat itself is also very small, so when the characters begin to be seiged upon by the ghosts, in this tiny boat, sitting in the middle of a swamp of sorts, it really creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia on the water. The characters themselves are modestly tolerable, and that helps the movie a lot also.
The lead girl isn't too bad-looking or annoying. She's not a bitch, but then again not a slut, more like just a normal girl is what one would call her. The guys in the film aren't total jock/jerk/assholes, who are overly concerned with booze and sex, and the other women in the film aren't super bitchy, whiny, or any of those things. So you can see why I liked this film early on, it gave me something to like.
However...as things move on, like for example, after a scene where the boat explodes, and the groups numbers begin to dwindle, things turn weird, but also boring. Granted, I wasn't expecting the answer to why spirits seem to haunt the reeds to be handed to me early, but the movie doesn't do much beyond the beginning of act 2 to keep the viewers interest. It then also flips the story totally over by adding a gun-toting mystery man into the mix.
And when that happened, my hopes for this movie were all dashed to bits. Why? Well because I've seen enough horror films to know that ghostly teenagers + a deserted swamp area + a gun-toting hermit guy ='s an ending that you can see coming a mile away. Yep, once he shows up, any good horror movie buff can figure out where this movie is gonna end up right when the end credits begin rolling. And it turns out, I was right.
But the question is, does the movie give up any good stuff between the beginning of act 2 and the end of the third act, thus the end of the movie as a whole? Well, no not really. Truth be told, this movies first act kicks ass. The second act is a wash, and act three is a disaster. And instead of being a terrifying, creepy, and dark, sinister, and ominous horror film for the duration, it only manages to be one for one act.
Before skirting off into a direction that most American horror films would take. The ending doesn't leave you in the dark however, and I guess that could be written down as a plus. The ending is as tight as could possibly be, it gives you the big reveal, the big twist, and explains everything with one quote made by our gun-toting slicker-wearing guy. But "The Reeds", despite it's clear-as-a-bell ending, doesn't pack enough of a punch beyond the first act to be tremendously successful.
It doesn't need a ton of blood and gore to survive, considering it's a supernatural horror film. But it did need scares and a good story. Something it only delivered early on, but eventually left behind for some odd reason as the picture went on. Disappointing, as I felt this movie could've been really good has it stayed with what brought it to the dance.
Positives:First act was terrific, tolerable young-people characters, good directing, and some nice spooky swamp sceneries in the night time shots.
Negatives:Acts 2 and 3 don't deliver what act 1 did, nor build upon it strongly enough. The big twist makes me think of some lame ghost films that Hollywood in America has made in the past. And the overall final scene, while it worked perfectly into the tory, I felt was unfair to the surviving characters.
Overall:Two stars out of four.
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