Terrortory

'TERRORTORY': Three Stars (Out of Five)

An ultra-low-budget anthology horror movie, telling six different supernatural tales. It was written and directed by three indie filmmakers; Dan Doran, Kevin Kangas and Mark Wenger. It stars a cast of completely unknown actors. The film is pretty cheesy, and amateurish, but there are a few quality elements to it; especially considering how low-budget it is.

The movie centers around a couple that's trying to entertain each other, while waiting for the electricity to come back on during a power outage. The guy (Brad Masters) tries to impress his female friend (Laura Kiser), by telling her five very bizarre scary stories. Each supernatural tale revolves around different people being stalked, and killed, in the woods. The segments are titled 'Gotz', 'Siren', 'The Prowler', 'Smiling Jack', 'The Drone Collector' and 'The Midnight Clown'.

At first the film was pretty painful to watch (full of atrocious dialogue, nonsense stories, and bad acting); but as it went on, I started to notice several elements I liked to it. I think to really enjoy the movie, you have to respect low-budget filmmaking; being an ultra-low-budget filmmaker myself, this is something I can do. The movie is pretty bad, in comparison to mainstream horror flicks, but for a next to no-budget film, it's not that horrible (some of it is kind of cool).

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I revisited the original Terrortory tonight. Since my first viewing, I've fallen deeper into the rabbit hole that is microbudget indie filmmaking, specifically of the horror variety.

I "get it" now, and I'm a fan. You can't come into this expecting a polished film with seasoned actors (although a few are quite good). What you can expect is a fun, well-written script, some legitimately weird, scary monsters with their own memorable trademarks (DID YOU BRING ME MEAT?), some nice camerawork, a pretty terrific score, and a palpable love for the genre.

Even if there's a segment in this anthology you're not super impressed by - for me, it's 'The Prowler,' - a new one starts up before you know it.

For me, it's the writing in 'Smiling Jack' and the nightmarish weirdness of 'Gotz' that make this one of my new favorites. Support these for-the-love-of-moviemaking filmmakers! There's a lot here to admire.

I was trying to update items in the 'parental guide' section, but nodded off twice (despite being otherwise wide awake) and kept getting lost whenever I rewound the movie to try and find where I dozed off at since EVERY SINGLE story segment is "people hiking through the woods in daylight".

Everything looks and sounds the same.

I ended up just giving up once the clown showed up, but I'm positive I missed some stuff due to how insistent the film is in putting me to sleep against my will.

.................. MY RATING SCALE ..................

• 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video
• 2. Utterly Terrible
• 3. Really Bad
• 4. Mediocre
• 5. Perfectly Average
• 6. Surprisingly Entertaining
• 7. Very Good
• 8. Incredibly Good
• 9. Exceptionally Great
• 10. Reserved for my Personal Favorites.

Hahahahahaha. I love to see the 10/10 ratings for this movie. Don't they realize how transparent their bias is? IMDb should require reviewers to fill out a conflict of interest form, and if someone signs it and there is later suspicion that there was, in fact, a conflict, then that person should have legal action taken against them, at the most, or banned from IMDb for life, at the least. I'm making a big deal out of this because there is so much crap out there that it is really hard to wade through all the BS to find something that is vetted and worthy of my precious time. Verrrrrry frustrating. This is a 3/10 horror movie, at best. Cheesy special effects, stupid stories, low production value, just....stupid. I actually think the acting is the, ahem, bright spot in this turd. I understand that this is an independent effort but for the love of God, if this is what your final product is, then don't bother making it. If this movie were a person it would have 3 legs, 4 arms, horns, hooves and an IQ of 12.

Just don't bother.

Low budget indie film not worth the time. I love an indie horror flick when the story/stories are somewhat original but this was not one of them.