Red Canyon

I made the mistake of reading the IMDb reviews and forum posts on this title and believing them, what a sucker I am.

This film was awful, if they had spent half the effort making it as they did flooding the internet with positive reviews it may have been watchable. It was not shocking, it was not "real", it was incredibly poor.

Here is an example of the "amazing" acting: Woman opens cupboard, shotgun fall onto her making her fall onto the ground(it must be a very heavy shotgun!!), the gun goes off inches from her head and she casually says, " I hate it here". WTF!!!!!!!!

I have been unable to find a single honest review on the internet of this film, unless you really believe it is a 10/10 shockfest, the most amazing, sick, romantic, gory, dramatic, life changing event of the century then I suggest you stay away.

I don't know how anyone who has actually seen other movies would call this a movie with great acting. This movie is clouded with sophomoric scare tactics and so much melodrama that it was actually way more humorous than scary. I wont even address the ridiculous plot but i would like to thank the other reviewers on this forum who have referred to this as a great horror flick that "requires thought." It does require thought in the same manner that reading a Peanuts comic strip requires thought. There is nothing complex or creative about this film. I was hoping that this would turn out to be one of those hidden gems that somehow missed the popular audience and for the first 10-15 minutes there seems to be just enough promise to keep the viewer locked in. It quickly spirals from there however and manages to commit enough tacky plot drifts that it becomes impossible to forgive. Ultimately if your looking for an intelligent horror flick with decent acting keep looking.

Okay, so I decided to watch this movie because it has my favorite actor Justin Hartley from This Is Us, who plays Kevin Pearson in that show (and quite well, I might add). I knew this was going to be bad based on what I'd read but I thought maybe it would at least be fun to watch. It was not.

It was just plain bad. Not "so bad it was good." Just awful. There was literally nothing good about it. Don't watch it. Don't even think about it. Go do something else instead. Pretty much anything else would be a better use of your time.

Films with Red in the title tend to be good for some reason. No i am not doing a list, though i will mention top Australian thriller Red Hill. This did not get a UK theatre release. I only know of it as it was given faint praise by Kim Newman in an issue of Empire mag on it's belated DVD release.It turns out to be a handsomely filmed Drama with horror overtones as two youngsters and their friends return to the family home in the badlands of Utah, where a brutal rape causes them to return to try to put it behind them. Not the best idea to say the least, but this manages to carry it off with a good script and decent acting.Think the opposite side of the plot in the excellent Wolf Creek and your nearly there. Well worth a look and there's a dog you would not take down the pub!

Red Canyon follows Devon and Regiina and their friends on their visit to an old family home. Unfortunately, a depraved incident happened years ago, which has consequences in the present day.

Thankfully, unlike with say, that "Friday the 13th" remake, it actually feels like they're on vacation. For example, when the group is split up, someone asks whether they're going to return to the others before finding somewhere they can have lunch; which may be a little thing but it helps. Also, as they're arriving everyone seems tired of the others, something that often occurs during long road trips.

Unfortunately that leaves less time for actual characterisation. Regina seems traumatised by the past events, Tom seems to be the obnoxious guy and Terra might be the slutty girl unless that scene's intention was to characterise another guy as lecherous. That's about it.

Actually there isn't much splatter on screen but what's seen tends to be brutal. What drags the film down though is... without spoilers, I can only say there's a very long explanation of the past event which drags on for around ten minutes towards the finale. That's when I stopped caring, incidentally.

The film shows some promise and while decent, ultimately it's nothing special.