Siblings Darry and Trisha
(Justin Long and Gina Philips) are travelling the long country back roads, on their way home from university.
But as they pass a derilict old church, they see a mysterious figure dumping, what appears to be, a body down an
old well.
Deciding to ignore what they saw, they are later run off the road by the mysterious person, who's driving a turbo charged old farm truck. So they decide to go back and find out what he was upto. Discovering the well leads to a large underground chamber, filled with preserved bodies adorning the walls and ceiling, they get the police involved, but unfortunately their troubles don't end there.
As they're being escorted out of harms way, the man-in-the-van comes back and quickly makes mincemeat of the cops. However this is no ordinary psycho, it turns out that the mysterious character is actually some sort of winged demon, that feeds on human body parts and has them in mind for his next meal.
If at this point you were thinking this sounds like a cross between "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Pumpkinhead", you would be absolutely correct. I was hoping the film would actually start to get going now, having already spent 45 mins of the film to get this far, with overly long, drawn out, protracted scenes of the main protagonists driving through the countryside. But no, even more long winded boredom was to follow, as they spend the remainder of the film needlessly stopping and starting every 5 mins as they attempt to get more help, resulting in about 30 seconds worth of action and half an hour of pointless conversation each time.
The film also rips off elements of "Duel", but then shamelessly goes onto rip off the police station shootout from "Terminator", and just when I thought the film was about to get interesting it ended abruptly, culminating in an extremely downbeat ending which I didn't enjoy at all. So much for this being an updated version on the classic old monster stories, it's just a pity the director decided to waste so much time establishing the characters and its central premise, when he should have been advancing the plot.
Released to UK cinemas with the modest advertising slogan "The Best Horror film in the Last 10 Years". I don't know which reviewer wrote that, but whatever medication they're on, I would suggest they reduce the dosage!
Another good idea wasted!
