Aptly enough for a film called Reeker, the plot is as fresh as sun-baked road kill.
After a pleasantly unpleasant pre-credits shock that puts the "eye" into CGI, writer-director Payne follows a road well-traveled by previous horror outings ranging from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes to The Evil Dead and the disappointing Identity.
Scattered throughout the movie, like unexpected motorway services, are some novel ideas and enough well-executed jolts and gore to fill a mid-sized people carrier.
The best moment has a blind teen (Gummersall) walk into a motel room where a captured woman missing half her face attempts to call out to him. Mysterious static-filled phone messages from an unknown caller also send a shiver up the spine.
But chills like this are stranded amidst pedestrian subplots such as horny young things Richardson (last seen in Hostel) and Kebbel taking an eternity to do some horizontal jogging, and drug dealer Mabius hunting down slacker Whyte who has scarpered with a bag load of "E"s.
Despite a final twist that attempts to explain why characters can lose limbs with barely a wince, there are plot holes as vast as the desert vistas the camera so lovingly ogles, such as why do bullets hurt the otherwise invincible malodorous meanie?
As acting goes the cast are no better or worse than any of the anonymous clones populating any Final Destination instalment, but Roger Corman protégé Payne should be sent back to film school for criminally wasting the great cult actor Michael "Scanners" Ironside in what is little more than a cameo.
As protracted episodes of The Outer Limits go Reeker is not a complete stinker, but stale carbon-copy horror like this will never smell of roses will it?
Rob Daniel
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