Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you that rarest of all beasts: a Christy pick that I didn't hate! I was mildly curious to see how a Kurt Russell movie could fly so low under the radar. I figured that this was some low-budget crapfest he did that got released around the same time as The Hateful Eight in order to capitalize on the marketing. But it's not a terrible movie. I have no idea why this didn't get more press.
A drifter (David Arquette) wanders into the town of Bright Hope and is pretty much immediately shot by the sheriff (Kurt Russell) for being shifty. The town doctor is a drunk so the sheriff calls on Mrs. O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons) to fix up the drifter and leaves her in the care of his deputy (Evan Jonigkeit). overnight. Unfortunately for all concerned, the drifter had pissed off a bunch of cave-dwelling cannibals before he came to town and a party of them track him to the jail, taking the deputy and lady as a bonus. The sheriff and his backup deputy (Richard Jenkins) put together a party of men to search for the captives consisting of the town dandy (Matthew Fox) who has a serious hate-on for Native Americans of all kinds, and Mr. O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) who isn't going to let a silly thing like a broken leg keep him from getting his wife back.
It reminded me a lot of The Descent, except with less moments of abject terror. Like, if The Hills Have Eyes had a nicer cousin or something. You don't really see Western/horror as a genre crossover very often so I would recommend it on that basis alone. It helps that all of the leads are excellent and the gore effects are very well-done.
No comments:
Post a Comment