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Six young friends get together and
head out of town to the remote community of Old Mines for a river
rafting trip to take place along the river that flows through the area.
Once they arrive though, they find that what should be a pleasant little
community isn’t pleasant at all and that the residents there are a wee
bit more reclusive than most, even by small town standards. This becomes
even more evident when the local police ask them to get out of town.
They get on with their boat trip
anyway, but by then it’s too late and they come to know that the town
is holding a sinister secret in the form of a hillbilly killing machine
known only as ‘the boy.’ Big as a bear and twice as mean, ‘the
boy’ begins hunting them down in the woods and along the river and
killing them off one by one. But some of the campers aren’t going down
that easy, or at least, not without a fight. And how does the mayor of Old Mines fit into all of this?
Have we seen all this before? Yep.
Many times. The Undertow makes no apologies about wearing
its influences blatantly on its sleeve. It mixes up elements of The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, The
Hills Have Eyes and other backwoods horror classics and actually
does a pretty good job of capturing the gritty, bleak feeling that made
those movies so effective.
And what it lacks in originality it
makes up for in gore! Heads are crushed, limbs are severed, and the
monstrosity that is ‘the boy’ basically rips these poor bastards in
pieces before he’s finished with them. All of this is, of course,
shown in close up detail and the camera never shies away from showing
you everything. Luckily, the effects, while not perfect, do hold up
pretty well and are reasonably convincing for such a low budget affair.
Much noise has been made as of late
about returning to the favored flavor of ‘seventies horror,’
especially since the release of Rob Zombie’s House Of 1,000
Corpses more or less split horror movie fandom down the middle.
And while The Undertow does play in a similar vein to
those films most often associated with that era, it doesn’t take the
approach so literally as to set itself in that decade or reference it
constantly, which makes it easier to take seriously.
Anyway, yes, it is a really low
budget movie and no it’s not without its flaws, but the camerawork
(for a shot on video production) and acting are above average for this
type of film, the gore set pieces work really well, and the story, while
not original, is fast paced and exciting which makes The Undertow
worth checking out. Jeremy Wallace, who also helmed The Christmas
Season Massacre, shows quite a bit of potential with this effort
and might be someone to keep an eye out for in the future.
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