Rating: C
Dir: David Doucette
Star: Jamie Temple, Lauren Watson
This is a first-time effort by writer-director Doucette, and to be honest, it shows. On the other hand, it’s by no means a disaster. The limited resources are often obvious – it’s a single location, with basically a pair of actors, and was filmed in two weeks for $13,000. Yet it’s clear that Doucette has aimed at making a film with the available time and money, and this always works better than films which over-stretch themselves. In the end though, it’s still a micro-budget horror movie and, especially in the early going, it’s not particularly good. However, I would venture to suggest, you can see Mt. Good – or at least its lower slopes – from here. That’s closer than many horror debuts get.
Couple Sam (Watson) and Jason (Temple) are on their way into the countryside to visit Sam’s sister at her house. On arrival, there’s nobody around, so they opt to go for a nice, cooling dip in the lake on the property. BIG mistake, you will probably be unsurprised to hear, especially if you were paying attention to the title. Jason comes out of the water feeling something has attacked his leg, and indeed, entered it. They retreat to the house, bandage the limb in question, and wait for the sister. She’ll be a while, since she is, in fact, lying dead in the basement. There is – colour me shocked – no phone service, and when they eventually try to leave (after about the tenth time Chris had yelled at them to depart), the car won’t start.
By this point, you’d be forgiven for having thrown in the towel. Beyond the numbing predictability, Watson, in particular, is thoroughly unconvincing and at times, appears to be reciting her lines off cue cards, held out of shot. Yet, as Jason’s condition worsens, and things become bleaker, the film unexpectedly manages to find its grounding. Oh, it never manages to break beyond what is expected. Indeed, I called the final shot with a good half-hour to go. Yet, within the narrow tracks of those expectations, it was able to do a decent job of holding my interest. The way it ends may have been likely inevitable; however, I can’t say I didn’t find it satisfying.
In addition, the relationship between the two leads started to become convincing, rather than feeling like an artificial construct, purely for the movie’s benefit. When Sam and Jason appear to care for each other, it becomes easier for the viewer to do so, and by the time of the final encounter, back at the pond (top), I was more invested in their fates than I would have predicted, during the earlier slog through dialogue which sometimes felt like trench warfare. It’s a bit of a shame that Doucette does not appear, at time of writing, to have followed up with another feature. While there’s definitely scope for improvement, there is potential, and he freely admits in interviews to this having been a huge learning experience. I would have been curious to see him put the lessons learned into practice.