Thursday 9 October 2014

Madison County (2011)


As part of a college project, James arranges an interview with author David Randle. Randell's book is about Damien Ewell, who the author claims is Americas biggest untraced serial killer, having killed at least 30 people over the last decade.
Along with 4 freinds, James travels to Madison County, Upon arriving at the town the locals, clearly not keen on outsiders, tell them that Damien is fictional, and that David Randle left the area years ago.
Determined not to waste the trip, the teens go searching for Randle, but are picked off one by one, by a man wearing a pig mask.


An utterly typical slasher with nothing, good or bad, to set it out from the pack. As such I'm left with little to say.

In fact, writer director Eric England wears his love of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on his sleeve thought Madison County. Feeling tonally similar to the 2003 remake throughout. The opening scene, which sees a woman covered in blood sweet and tears on the flatbed of a pickup truck, is so reminiscent of the end of Tobe Hooper's 1974 original that for a brief moment I was expecting this movie to be an unofficial sequel to that one... In fact, with only very a minor re-write it easily could have been.

Mostly competently made, the only real complaint on a technical level is with the lighting; some forest scenes are so dimly lit that they give the impression of night time, causing some moments that seem like glaring continuity errors. Meanwhile some action scenes are so overly backlit that the focus is reduced to silhouette.

Other than that minor gripe though it's a sound enough, if forgettable, slasher. It'll fill a Saturday evening, just don't expect it to redefine your ideas on the genre.




Disclaimer:
If you look through the archives, you'll see that I've been using "Bought from Poundland" as a tag since at least 2011.


At the end of October 2013 I decided that all of my 2014 movies would be purchased from Poundland, and began buying up horror movies, to ensure I would have enough come October 2014.

In March 2014 I took a part time job at Poundland.

In accordance with the companies social media policy, in September 2014 I contacted Poundland's social media team to check that I would be okay to carry on with my plan to use the "bought from Poundland" tag.

I have been given the go-ahead on condition that I make the following clear:


All the reviews on this blog are entirely the opinion of Will Tingle, the reviews are not endorsed by Poundland in any way and (as should be obvious from some of the more scathing ones) are certainly not reviews I have been paid to write.

In short: The views expressed in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Poundland or it's owners, shareholders, or  management.

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