The Lurker

I like slashers and I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt because I like the lead actress. Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween movies, Cynthia, Feral) stars as a high school student and yes, she is very, very clearly too old for her part. But I was willing to let that slide because I like the actress and let's face it, this is a movie set at Crystal Lake High. You shouldn't expect much, just some dumb slasher fun. Unfortunately, it doesn't even deliver on that.

Taylor-Compton is good in her role and it's actually one of her better parts. She's starring in the school production of Romeo and Juliet and is popular but has some problems. Her play's director hates her, she has a weird relationship with her mom's boyfriend (and honestly she only looks about four years younger than either of them), and she has a dark secret the movie is constantly alluding to. And she's pregnant, which is given away in the trailer.

That's all well and good. What sucks is how incredibly slow this movie is. It's really structured more like a high school melodrama with the kills few and far between. The movie is just dull and by the third act when things actually start happening, I was already pretty checked out. Considering how short this movie is, it's incredible that it still feels so boring and drawn out. I only recommend it for Scout Taylor-Compton's most die hard fans.

I saw the bad reviews about the casting but thought I could ignore it if it had enough of an "80's slasher" feel to it because none of those actors were teenagers either but it really was too hard to get past. I actually burst out laughing when Taylor-Compton referred to herself as "underage" to a man who looked like her husband...if not, son.

But again, I could have forgave it if the plot was substantial but it wasn't. It was uneventful and by-the-numbers. I guess if you're a big Horror fan it might be worth a watch if you have some time to kill. But I wouldn't spend money on it.

Following the death of a faculty member, the students of a local high school play decide to carry on in their honor, but when the lead actress becomes convinced that she's in danger for a cruel prank she and her friends pulled years earlier they find the performance targeted by a masked killer out for revenge.

On the whole, this was a disappointing slasher. One of the better aspects here is the rather fun setup and layout of the school's performances that are shown here. The performances pieces are quite high-end for a high-school quality production, especially the opening which goes alongside the fine stalking of the victim throughout the school as it's ongoing. Likewise, the latter part of the film where it goes away from the school to a series of enjoyable stalking at the house part gets another fun addition of some brutal kills to the mix with bashings by a bat, drowning in a sink and numerous grisly impalements which is all that is likable here, unfortunately. There are some big problems on display. Among the biggest drawbacks is an utterly bland, cliche and unimpressive high-school drama setup that takes place at the school. The entire setup about the backstabbing and jealousy that arises when dealing with the club-members, from secretly trying to sabotage the other actors to get their turn in the spotlight or the clique of mean girls trying to get through the year together with a secret intact, are nowhere near interesting at all and are just absolute cliches that have no point in being included here. All their inclusion seems to offer up is eye-rolling and boredom throughout the first half here with the inclusion of these insipid and useless elements present. The other problem is the terrible and completely out-of-left-field finale that undermines what happened beforehand here. The true revelation of the killer makes no sense as there's nothing about their intentions mentioned as a motivation for getting involved that requires them to engage in this slaughter as all of it just comes off as stupid. That reveal also changes around a leads' likability by switching around their entire setup to have it make sense, and the entire outcome in the hospital makes no sense either if the entire point is undermined by performing what happens in full view of everyone. It's not shocking, intriguing and just makes this more of a mess than it should.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

The Lurker is oddly titled as everything is pretty straight forward once you understand what the plot is. The structure of the movie is to keep you off guard as you aren't certain what the cast is talking about in terms of what is known about the main character. Bt about half way through, it's pretty ovbious what is happening and what's the "secret."

The cast is decent even though they are much too old to be high school seniors. They do the "mean girl" well enough, and creepy toxic male efficiently enough. But, this can't compensate for the tepid plot and twist, as well as the unsuccessful ending. Instead of continuing their attempts for intrigue, the ending simply showcases the base impulse of the characters. Well how not fun this is.

Mediocre production with basic plotting, and mostly adequate acting make this tolerable, but at the end, this wasn't worth the time spent watching.

This movie does not even deserve a review, because it's on the level of a high school project, where all of the "actors" and "actresses" were cast off the street and randomly given roles, some of them deciding to ham it up like an absurd comedy. The lead actress looks to be the age of the mother of the classmates, there's an entire generation gap between her and the rest of the students. The acting is tone deaf, amateurish, emotionally devoid, and on the verge of character breaking. Scenes just suddenly lurch forward with every cut, with no regard to tone, setting, or logic. The dialogue is either banal, on the nose, pointless, or senseless (in the case where the lead refers to a clearly normal human killer as "something") To top it off, the audio is quickly slapped together, with several places where ambient audio is simply missing, as characters are speaking with no sound, sentences are cut off between scenes a couple times, some voices are omnipresent, while sometimes a person's voice audio will be louder than the others. It's movies like these that IMDB should have a 0 rating, because this isn't a legitimate feature film, it's a group project where even the people involved will be embarrassed to see again.