Rites of Spring

Two girls are kidnapped in the parking lot of a bar by unknown assailants. They are taken to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and strung up as sacrifice to a local deity that comes out in the spring. One escapes, stumbling onto a group of kidnappers right in the middle of a ransom plot gone wrong, and about to be made worse when a large, ugly beast out of a Party City costume log comes after them.

"Rites of Spring" is your definitive mediocre, boring slasher trying to be an homage to classic seventies horror. It's not bad, and those that say it is bad clearly haven't ever seen the films this is trying to remake. No horror slasher is good. Some are simply more exciting than others. This is not one of those films.

Our heroes are nonplussed actors who are not very good at what they do. But they represent the film in that they are not bad. Perhaps it is because the script has about as much life as a decorative plastic rock made to cover up blemishes in one's lawn. It's not ever particularly interesting. But it's not bad.

"Rites of Spring" is not a bad film. But it's not a good one.

I'm not sure what the worst thing is about this low budget horror yarn, the script or the directing. The script, I think, although the direction is pretty poor and uninteresting. The problem with RITES OF SPRING is that it's all so predictable, and it has less going on than even the likes of a WRONG TURN sequel.

The story tells of a kidnapping gone wrong, as a group of kidnappers attempt to take a rich man's daughter in return for a big ransom. A second storyline sees a couple of young women kidnapped by a creepy old farmer, where they are to become lunch for something terrible living in the basement. Eventually the two plot strands combine in the most predictable way imaginable.

There's very little going on here and nothing we haven't seen before. The shocks and twists are very well telegraphed and of the type we've seen countless times. The characters are thinly drawn and the performances completely forgettable. All this has going for it is some half-decent make-up and some okay gore effects, but that's hardly a reason to keep you going; this is barely watchable.

This incredibly low budget horror movie has no clue what it wants to be. It is a home invasion movie, then a kidnap movie, then a serial killer movie, then a killer hillbilly movie, and the worst part is that it does all of these equally bad. The acting is terrible across the board, the story is laughable, the direction is all over the place, like it was filmed by a 10 year old that was using all the new features on his camera phone, which it was probably shot on. I understand that this was a bad movie and it knows it, but that does not change the fact the it is awful on every level, well, except maybe for the poster, which was interesting enough to catch my eye and got me to watch this waste of time movie. 1.5 Beards Out Of 5

Not terrible, actually the 35-40 minutes are pretty interesting and fairly creepy during the horror portions and tense during the crime portions. I have to take serious mark down for having a weak ending (that I think was really meant to imitate Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and some logic issues about how the scenes with the kidnapper in the barn plays out. (Everyone is that close to him, he's assaulting a friend, but no one tries to kick/shove him off? Then he goes down and a dude twice his size doesn't take the opportunity to beat his ass? C'mon now.) That said, it's as fairly solid effort with good atmosphere and is well shot. Worth a view on Netflix or whatnot.

A ransom scheme turns into a nightmare for a group of kidnappers who become victims of a horrifying secret that must be paid every spring.

Horror fans will instantly recognize AJ Bowen, the current independent horror go-to actor. Beyond that, many faces appear on screen that we may never see again. There is particularly terrible acting from the father character, which might take some viewers out of the movie.

This might appeal to some people, but it never seems to quite capture what it was going for. While it starts as a kidnapping film, it turns into something like a poor man's "Jeepers Creepers". And even then, there is an undercurrent that is not far removed from "It". At no point does anything seem quite original enough to merit respect.