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| Credits |
Director: Patrik Syversen
Starring: Ruta Gedmintas, Courtney Hope, Joshua Bowman, Jamie Blackley, Bruce Payne
Screenplay: Tim Tori
Country: USA, UK |
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After Dark are trying to make quality new horror movies, and good on 'em. Prowl is an entry in their line, and the film is a UK/Bulgarian co-production. I can't help but wonder why, if the idea is to be original, the cast aren't allowed to use their normal accents? There're so many low budget horror movies made and set in America, why not make Prowl stand out a bit by being set in the UK? I understand the desire to take the American market by storm, but why try to do that by blending in?
In Prowl a young woman is desperate to shake the dust from her small town, and with friends as irritating as hers, who wouldn't be? The town itself seems really dull, too, so she has my sympathy. She gets a shock revelation from her highly inebriated mother, which makes her even keener to get away. Her attempt to move turns into a road trip with her friends, but their vehicle breaks down. A trucker stops and they persuade him to give them a lift, though I did wonder why everyone was still going, particularly given they would now have no way home? In real life, this scenario would probably just result in the friends being stranded in the city, but because this is a horror movie it results in them being stalked by something not quite human when the truck eventually reaches its ominous destination...
I wouldn't call Prowl clichéd, but at times the movie treads on familiar territory. It's kind of like a mix of Mother's Day and From Dusk Till Dawn, so it's not hugely original, but at least it's competently made. I was expecting tepid serial killer fare from the early scenes, so I was briefly pleased when monsters showed up. Despite its short run time, Prowl takes awhile to set itself up, but once it gets going there is a bit of a surprise when the film decides to make up for its previous lack of violence in a matter of moments. While this decision caught me off guard, the film definitely hits the action high point here, which is a shame because there's still a long way to go. There're a few amusing lines, but mostly the characters are just annoying. Another grating factor is the decision to overuse jumpy editing to startle the audience or cause confusion during fight scenes. The movie has a rather large plot hole that it bizarrely makes an effort to draw attention to, and a few other moments of terrible awkwardness that push it closer to being a bad film than a good one.
I wouldn't say Prowl is bad, but I wouldn't say it's worthwhile, either. It's another one of those mediocre films that is just…there. |
