DVD Release
Two sisters, Megan and Abby Graves embark on a pop culture/attraction road trip before Megan leaves for New York City to start a new job. They end up taking a detour at the roadside attraction Skull City Mines, an abandoned and purportedly haunted town on a self guided tour. Will they make it out alive?
I thought this was actually a worth while entry into the After Dark Horrorfest. I know a lot will disagree with me here but hear me out on this one. Yes, the plot is a been there and done that Texas Chainsaw/ Tourist Trap and it definitely falls into that sub-genre of the crazy, backwoods, religious fanatics. The script writers do throw in a supernatural bent that makes this their own. This really is all fun and games, this film is more than aware of itself and they aren’t taking the proceedings seriously so why should we? They have given us two completely likable and lovely comic book fangirls that have always wanted to be monster fighters and these two are very easy on the eyes. More importantly, our two heroines have completely believable chemistry together. I also had no problem rooting for them. I do know that many will be disappointed that there’s no nudity involved but you can’t have everything, can you? We have genre staples Tony Todd and Bill Moseley with Todd playing an always over the top reverend. I’m not kidding here folks, he is entertaining, gigantic and bouncing around, calling out to Jesus and speaking in tongues? What’s not to like about that? Bill always the psycho killer in these affairs does not disappoint but we’ve seen this from him before. Still, isn’t it a good thing for genre fans to revisit these characters from Bill? Personally, I don’t mind and tend to always enjoy my fave character actors doing their thing. They’ve given us the band Calabrese with Jimmy and Bobby doing a live tune along with the lead singer from Lamb of God, David Randall Blythe whose acting skills definitely need some honing but who cares?
There’s always dark before dawn so I will admit that the opportunities for gore were definitely squandered and this doesn’t deliver a whole lot in the way of kills and dead tourists though the body count isn’t to shabby. Still the fun is in the acting and atmosphere. The abandoned town with its loads of abandoned buildings seems large even though it probably wasn’t. The director takes advantage of what he has to work with and does so with a bit of finesse in my opinion. Even the lighting for the most part works well. There are a lot of day/bright scenes and they still manage to make this look good. The pacing is good and I was never bored with this film that seems like so many others before. Let’s face it, how much new can you manage to bring to the table in this sub-genre? This is one of those films where you just don’t mind going along with these two girls in search of the world’s biggest thermometer only to end up in an abandoned mining town!
