FrightFest '07: Storm Warning

Pop quiz: name a movie where a small group of people heads out into the middle of nowhere, gets lost, and ends up being terrorised by hillbillies. Whatever you answered with, give yourself a point. You could have a gold star, but honestly, it's too easy a question; there are dozens and dozens and dozens of these films. Some of them are better than others, and, honestly, most of them are better than Storm Warning.

In this particular permutation of the well-worn formula, an Aussie guy and his beautiful French girlfriend hire a boat for the day. Although it's bright and sunny when they set off, the weather soon changes, and because they're stupid, they decide to take a bizarre route through some swampy storm drains back to the boat hire place, instead of just going back the way they came. As a result, they soon find themselves stranded and, as is the wont of people in this kind of horror movie, they find and break into a farmhouse. Although the place initially looks abandoned (though there's a blow-up sex doll on prominent display) the couple stumble across a shed full of marijuana plants, and before they have time to engage their brains and leave, the owners of the house are home.

Obviously, the owners of the house aren't happy about people breaking into their home; they're also moronic rednecks who proceed to terrorise the unsuspecting yuppie couple in various ways. All of which you've seen before. In the last ten minutes, the tense and threatening atmosphere that had built up in spite of (rather than because of) the director's best efforts is dispelled by rampant absurdity. Logic is thrown out of the window in favour of some splatstick nonsense and...

It's just so tiring. We've seen it all before, a hundred times over. This wave of meanspirited, illogical, badly written redneck horror movies needs to end, now. There's nothing left to do with this genre, and it's time everyone came to terms with that.

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