Movie Review: Laid to Rest

Title: Laid to Rest
Genre: Horror/Slasher
Written and directed by: Robert Hall
Grade: D
Best Death: Tire inflation goo used to fill up the guy's head through the ear.
Worst Death: Knife to the chest.
Effects: A+ (they were practical, not digital; used foam latex and corn syrup)

I almost turned this movie off after the first ten minutes. But I muddled through and got to the end, and I'm glad I did, because in all, this is a good, solid C+ horror/slasher flick (thought I'm pretty much going to demolish this movie in this review). Yet the first little bit was one of the worst I've seen.  Here's a breakdown of the opening scenes:

- Flashy, ADD montage with lots of shots of different kinds of blades and some POV camera images of crying girls all set to annoying techno music over the credits.

- A young woman wakes up in a coffin, she panics and starts thrashing around.

- Woman escapes by knocking coffin over and breaking it open and proceeds to wander around funeral home trying to open doors, but not very hard (seriously, she just jiggles the handle, cries, then moves on--how about trying the deadbolt?)

- Woman finds a phone in the embalming room and dials 9-1-1 (there is actually a Post-It on the wall that instructs her to do so in an emergency); she says that she was "in a box" at "the dead people place." Operator tells her to stay on the line for 30 seconds so they can run a trace; but girl sees body in storage drawer and walks over to it like she's in a trance, pulling the phone cord out (actually, the cord breaks with the jack still in the phone, so the connection isn't really broken and the trace should have completed and the cops should have shown up--thus no movie!!).

- Woman sees killer and panics; old man appears and tries to unlock door, but he fumbles with his key chain and the dozens of keys he has--killer gets him!

- Woman escapes after injuring killer and is picked up by a stranger. She tells him she can't remember anything, only that she was "in a box" at the "place with the bodies"--which naturally leads the stranger to believe she's come from . . . a cemetery?

After the first ten minutes, I retitled this movie You Stupid Bitch. There were so many opportunities for her to escape, but she never does, instead relying on her weakness and the help of others (but more on that a little later).

From the moment the stranger picks her up, this actually gets kind of watchable. The stranger is a really cool, mid-40s bald guy. He's a bit of a redneck, but nice enough to take the woman back to his house to see if he and his wife can help her. Now, I'm not going to go through the entire plot here. It is long and doesn't make sense most of the time, so I'll just hit on some of my observances.

This is the story of a young woman and her attempt at escape from a killer who wears a mask that is a chrome skull and wears a small video camera on his shoulder to document his actions.

For one thing, I understand that this is a small town somewhere in Georgia, but NO ONE has a phone! Of the two people the young woman meets, neither has a phone--but one does have the Internet.  Which leads me to another issue. After the killer takes out the bald guy's wife, they drive off and come across a house, wherein lives a late-20s nerdy guy who's mother just passed away (the body the young woman saw in the funeral home). The nerdy guy uses the Internet, which the bald guy thinks is some kind of magic--he honestly has no idea what it is or that it can be used to look up information.

In another scene, the trio of the woman, bald guy, and nerd go to the police station (this is after sending an e-mail to 9-1-1--yup, they sent an emergency e-mail!) for help. Upon entering, the bald guy calls out for the sheriff, and when he gets no answer he kicks open the metal cage door that leads into the station--after just calling out once. What if the sheriff was pooping? Some one's a little too gungho. Well, naturally, the killer is there waiting on them, having taken out the police, right? Of course. So he attacks them an they escape and drive away . . . leading to the funeral home where the girl makes them stop because she says it might help her remember. So now (with the funeral home doors now unlocked) they go inside. But wait, the killer has somehow beaten them there (and don't think that this is one of those movies where there are two killer posing as one--it isn't).

That is just the first third of the film. At this point, our victimized heroine suddenly grows a pair and gets all brave when she sees the killer moving about an old barn next to the funeral home, stating that is now time some one took something from him for all that he's taken from others. She investigates, after being told not to, and is again, taken by the killer *sigh*. Again she's rescued by the bald guy who went home to get a gun; he shoot the killer a few times and they escape in the killer's Chrysler 300--nice car.

This movie also features the "floating issue" of fuel (a floating issue is a story element that pops up again and again and has really no effect on the story itself). When the bald guy picks up the woman, he asks if she's out of gas, and tells her that he doesn't have much. Later, they take the nerd's car, and it is specifically mentioned that he only has 1/8 of a tank. The killer's car has a full tank. This is what I mean by a floating issue. Also, there is an issue with camera batteries that comes up later, which suddenly transforms into video tape instead as the batteries magically recharge.

Anyway, the girl steals the killer's car while the bald guy and nerd are back at the nerd's house checking the emergency e-mail (the response is that they should CALL 9-1-1 if there is a real emergency). She drives to a small gas station (there's that fuel thing again), but the killer uses his remote GPS system to lock her in and make her do what he wants--which is get more video tape (this after the batteries in the video camera died and were reborn anew). She goes inside, takes too long, and the killer strikes. Her friends show up to rescue her. Unfortunately, the bald guy must be nearsighted because he could hit the guy from fifteen feet away in the barn, but misses blindly from about five feet.

To top the whole thing off--and to eventually lead to a final showdown between the woman and the killer--the bald guy attacks the killer in order to give the woman time to escape. But instead of running, she collapses on the floor and cries. For his heroic efforts, the bald guy gets a knife in the chest. The woman isn't even the one who kills the killer. The nerd set a lame trap for the guy and that's what gets him. So even in victory she's lame, but she does get a parting shot at his head with baseball bat after he's already dead. What a warrior she is.

Okay, so if that wasn't bad enough, there were a few lines of dialogue that made me roll my eyes. Here is a breakdown of how the woman speaks through most of the movie--I'm assuming she's supposed to be having memory trouble due to drugs, but it isn't really addressed. She refers to a casket as a box. She calls the funeral home the place with dead people or the dead body place (or some variation). At one point she tells the nerd that the killer wants to "make me dead." And a tire iron is called a tire stick.

The only real thing that kept this movie from getting an F was how great the effects were. The killer mostly used a customized Bowie knife, so there was plenty of close-up shots of grisly mutilations.

I only saw this because it was on one of the Encore movie channels and I didn't have to pay to watch it. I still kind of want my money back though.