[Plasterhead]
Plot:Every town has a local legend. Not all of them are deadly. Headed to Miami to celebrate winter break, a group of four college students from New Jersey take a detour into the bowels of rural West Virginia. There, the unwitting friends uncover a grotesque legend that stains the fabric of Rolling Glen, a sleepy backwoods town: the legend of Ray Williams, a black truck driver from Maine, on his way to Texas to make a delivery, brutally beaten by a band of locals after stopping off in town for a drink, his body left for dead in an empty cornfield and never found. They learn of crooked sheriff Earl Taggart, who helped acquit the locals involved in the attack, and who still lords over the small village with an iron fist. Fifteen years later, whispers of the Williams incident still float through the tired walls and eaves of Rolling Glen. As the four friends quickly find out, some believe Williams still roams the woods on the outskirts of town, surviving on the slaughter of wildlife.

Others claim to have seen Williams in person, a looming figure with a ghostly white visage, purportedly a makeshift cast to mask the scars and wounds left from the merciless assault. They have a name for Williams now: Plasterhead. Soon, the four friends find themselves holed up in an abandoned farmhouse, mired in a macabre web of terror. Sheriff Taggart will do anything to keep the truth buried: the truth that Plasterhead is frighteningly real. As these teens will soon learn, true evil has no face.

Cast: Kathryn Merry, Josh Macuga, Ernest Dancy, Raine Brown, Gerard Adimando, Brandon Slagle, Steph Van Vlack, Kevin Cannon, Tom DiNardo, Artie Brennan, Drae Williamson, Brian Dixon.

My Thoughts:Pretty damn good.

Review:I dread popping indie horror films into my dvd player these days, especially slasher movies. They just seem to get worse and worse each time. "Plasterhead", which comes from writer director Kevin Higgins was a film that I wasn't too sure about, especially considering it involves a guy with a plaster-made-mask offing teenagers in a small hick town. Sounded like just another backwoods bloodbath to me. But the film was a surprising treat when it was all said and done. The film starts off with a modestly attractive woman meeting a suggested-grisly fate, all set to the tune of the voiceover of a man calling in to a radio show about the local legend known as "Plasterhead".

After that, we fast-forward to a group of kids on their way to Miami for Spring Break. Of course as is the case with alot of films which follow the "city kids get lost in redneckville" storyline, a shortcut by the driver usually leaves the kids lost and royally screwed. But not in the case of this film, it's a ridiculous case of "being a good samaritan" that does in these kids, when one of them during a bathroom break finds a purse in a field, and instead of raiding it, they decide, against the protests of a few members of the group, to seek out the person who it belongs to. That decision leads them deeper and deeper into the clutches of a deadly local legend.

Higgins knows this genre very well, and while his film still comes off mostly as your A-typical slasher movie, it still tosses in enough interesting wrinkles to be one of those B-slasher movies that any genre fan can enjoy and not regret renting afterwards. For starters, instead of using the typical excuse of "sabotage", or "we need some sleep", the kids end up stranded in town because they're out of gas. A situation many young people who've ever taken a road trip before can relate to. To make matters worse, the town they're stuck in is such a smalltown that gas doesn't get brought there often, and the nearest town with gas ends up being 50 miles away.

And still there's the matter of that discovered purse, which for some reason the lead kid seems determined to return, against the protests of his other two friends who just want to take the money that's in it and run to Miami Beach which is where they were headed to begin with. The quiet smalltown and woodsy setting of this film give it some really spooky and eerie atmosphere, which really help to make the movie enjoyable and scary at the same time. There are really alot of moments where you think something is going to jump out at the characters but it doesn't. This young cast, which includes quick up and comer Raine Brown, does an excellent acting job also, which helps the film even more. I was very much impressed with many of the performances, and the fates of the characters is even more of a surprise.

Like I said before Higgins knows this genre very well, and knows what he needs to do to solidify his film as a slasher movie within the genre's normal rules, yet at the same time set it apart from the usual crap that comes, goes, and gives us all headaches and nightmares of awful filmdom for days. Higgins also makes a solid effort to develop his story, giving the killer an interesting backstory, which then translates into a very viable reason for his rampage of death and destruction. If you are the type of viewer who dreads cheaply strung together storylines in B-horror films, then "Plasterhead" should be a pleasant surprise for you.

While Higgins film doesn't boast a relatively large bodycount, or very gruesome scenes that you'll be chattering about for hours, it does offer up some brutal and nasty kills, nasty enough to suit the genre that it plays in very well. Higgins does add a bit of clicheness to his movie though, as with the kids stumbling upon this local legend of Plasterhead by accident, the A-typical character who wants to keep the legend buried for his own dark and sinister reasons makes an appearance, and while he's not exactly a character who scares the viewer in many ways, he will certainly be a character most viewers will find easy to hate. "Plasterhead" ends on a solid note, leaving a few questions marks alongside a couple of mean-spirited yet brilliantly done scenes. "Plasterhead" is a great horror film that reminds those of us ready to give up on indie horror, that indeed there are still good ones out there that come along every once in awhile.

Positives:Great performances by most of the actors involved, decent kills, very atmospheric, great story, and a very interesting and creepy villain.

Negatives:Could've been more kills.

Overall:Great indie slasher.





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