Note: This review is part of my coverage of Horrorfest IV.
The Reeds
The Reeds was a good place to start Horrorfest. It's an effective horror film that's neither the best of the crop, nor the worst. A group of twenty-somethings take a vacation in the boondocks (not exactly an original setup, I know), that takes the form of a river basin. They go boating and get lost, and inevitably get caught up with some vengeful ghosts trapped in the reeds. In some strange way, the past and the future are all woven together in this place.
Near the end of the film, there's a nice twist that leaves you questioning who is really the bad guy, but at the very end of the film there's another twist that, while poetic, doesn't seem to follow from previous events very well. To me it felt a bit forced. But the movie creates the convincing atmosphere of a vacation gone horribly wrong, and the river basin environment really contributes to the mood of the piece.
The characters were mostly likable, though there was that one idiot moron that you can hardly avoid in a horror film. If you ask me, if you're going vacationing somewhere away from modern civilization, leave the guy who's a jerk at home.
I was hoping for a monster in this movie, instead of just ghosts - some of the scary effects seemed to suggest something more beastly than ghostly, but it never panned out. Anyway those kids definitely seemed to be into some black magic shit, if you ask me. But I guess pursuing that would have taken the movie in a bit of a different direction than it was committed to going.
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