The Horde

When I sat down to watch the 2016 movie "The Horde" here in 2024, I was unfamiliar with the movie. And I actually thought it was a zombie movie. Yeah, I hadn't heard about the movie prior to sitting down and watching it here for the first time.

Writer and leading actor Paul Logan put together a rather generic script. It was an odd combination of a traditional young adult in the woods type of movie mixed with elements of deranged hillbilly killers roaming the woods. Sure, it was watchable, but you're not in for anything grand or innovative here. It was, in a lack for a better term, a rather generic hillbilly slasher flick. Writer Paul Logan didn't really bring anything great to the genre, that haven't already been seen in movies such as "The Hills Have Eyes", "Wrong Turn" and the like.

The movie started out pretty nice, but then the balloon sort of deflated and you have to venture more than 30 minutes into the movie before things start to pick up.

There are some familiar faces on the cast list, in bigger and smaller roles, with the likes of Paul Logan, Costas Mandylor, Bill Moseley, Don Wilson, Sydney Sweeney and Vernon Wells. I was initially rather thrilled when I saw Bill Moseley's name on the screen, but unfortunately he only had a minor support role in the movie. The acting in the movie were fair.

Visually then the movie was okay. There were some visceral killing scenes that sort of managed to spruce up an otherwise generic and bland storyline a bit. So thumbs up for that accomplishment.

I have to say that the movie's title, "The Horde", was poorly chosen, as there was no horde in the movie. So it just made absolutely no sense. And it definitely wasn't a zombie movie, which I initially believed it was.

My rating of director Jared Cohn's 2016 movie "The Horde" lands on a five out of ten stars.

The Horde was recommended to me by a friend - turns out I watched the wrong movie.

The acting is terrible and the horror movie tropes are laid on thick in this movie. A young Sydney Sweeney stars as the titular (heh) character and star student in this campy, and frankly unintentionally hilarious horror movie where a commando soldier accompanies his teacher fiancé in a field trip gone wrong.

Laughably bad, but worth watching with friends as part of a line up of bad movies that you can talk over. I wonder what the budget for this film was.

We were laughing that Sydney Sweeney's character plays the virginal good girl character in this. A far cry from her roles in pretty much every other movie or show she's been in.

No doubt the reason for a brand of whey protein a power drink are thanked in the credits to "The Horde" is because they helped keep its multi-functioning star Paul Logan -- who also wrote, produced and did fight choreography -- shredded and pumped. Logan's big biceps and lean, mean torso are the main attraction of this turkey, and a few more shirtless scenes would have been welcome. There's not much else to look at or appreciate.

Logan plays a SEAL who accompanies his fiancé, the world's worst nature photography teacher at some kind of probably for-profit rip- off college, on an "extra-credit" class camping trip. She has great advice like "try different settings" and "experiment," and inspirational pitches like "there's beauty everywhere." Her remedial students aren't terribly interested in photography and seem barely able to hold a camera -- one could be forgiven for thinking the film's title refers to them instead of the group of inbreds who kill, kidnap and torture them in the woods, until of course the muscular Logan snaps into action. The students are all either one thing -- the spoiled rich kid is just a spoiled rich kid, the horny couple is horny all the time -- or nondescript. Logan the screenwriter hasn't mastered creating characters that are remotely lifelike, even his own is one-dimensional. That's probably why they cast terrible actors -- why waste the money on good actors when you aren't giving them anything to play?

This is a combination trip-to-the-woods horror film and "Rambo"/"Missing in Action" style military action film. I guess we are too far removed from Vietnam for Logan to be re-fighting that war, so instead he picks off mutants of the horde the way Chuck Norris used to pick off Viet-Cong. Unfortunately, the mutants are about as uninteresting and uninspired as the hapless soldiers were, which is a problem for the horror-film part of the story. Costas Mandylor does a good job as the horde's opportunistic ring-leader, and Matthew Willig looks suitably imposing as his main henchman, but isn't given enough to do. Considering how much build-up there is to the fight between Logan and Willig, it is really disappointing that it didn't turn out better. Logan the fight choreographer is fine if not innovative, and Logan the actor is good at action, but director Jared Cohn doesn't have a knack for shooting action sequences in a dynamic way, at least not on this film's obviously limited budget. There is less of a sense of place (it isn't set anywhere specific) or realism than in ultra-low-budget films like "Deadly Prey" (to which this owes a debt). They are about as deep in the woods as your average company picnic, yet somehow this mass of mutants has lived there for decades unnoticed by the people of Topanga, where this was filmed, or the staff of the Burger King that is probably 10 minutes away from the location shoots.

One oddity: Don "The Dragon" Wilson, for my money the least interesting action star of the 1990s, has an entirely pointless cameo. I guess they couldn't get Norris.

I will give credit where credit is due, the set design and makeup is decent, but that's is it for the positives for this film. This movie wouldn't be enjoyed by anyone with a mental mentality over a 12 year old's. The characters are as cookie cut as they come, the snobby rich kid, the over sexed teens, and you just want them to hurry up and die faster so you don't have to cringe at their presence any longer, I don't think you were meant to side with the murderers in this movie, but that's what it makes you do. at one point I was saying to myself "they better make that douche suffer" Our hero in this movie, the ex Seal is incredibly unbelievable, due to equally bad acting and fighting choreography. Having making a thing about being "aware of your surroundings" you could sneak up on this idiot on bubble-wrap carpet while tap dancing in golf shoes.

The thing I found most infuriating about this movie is the Seal was trying to save his girlfriend and the cookie cut kids but wasted all these precious moments in the woods building elaborate booby traps, with the hopes that a single antagonist would stumble through, among the dozens, while he was playing Rambo in the woods, his main objective was being raped and murdered, it wasn't until the climax that he decided he had enough of playing Hunger Games in the woods and decided to go save his girlfriend.

The whole movie was just a sloppy, badly thought out mess, and a complete waste of time, so hopefully you will decide to not endure this film like I have.

2/10 set design and makeup is the only thing that justified not giving it a 1/10.

MTP Murder Torture Porn type movie. Has a few redeeming one liners but wow is it otherwise stupid. Hillbillies and escaped convicts bought the cops and are cooking meth and living like Kings in the bayou or something. In comes John Rambo and his wife to be and her students and a love fest ensues.

Boring.

3/10.