Summer's Blood

How weird it can go, I had never heard of Stephen McHattie before. But a few weeks ago I popped into "pontypool" and now I see him playing again in this flick, and he did well and believable again. But I must say that Ashley Greene best known for the Twilight saga did well too. And by hereby the best is said of this flick. The acting is well but it's all so low on gore or the red stuff. I guess that Lee Demarbre (the director) did better with the black comedy "smash cut" then with this here. It could have been so much messier but sadly, most of the killings are off-screen. I even saw the steady-cam reflecting in a car. Just a flick to watch and unfortunately to forget.

Some unadapted teen girl travels to some small town in search for her dad after she fought with her mom who told him that she had aborted the girl. Soon she meets what seems to be a normal young man. But the morning after she finds herself chained in the basement on a bed of dirt. Another half dead girl is sitting nearby and a bunch of skulls. He talks to her kindly, explaining that she's key to his garden and that loves his garden. Meanwhile the father of the other girl is just out of jail and looking for his daughter. As more people disappear things get complicated. But the highlight of the movie purports to be the return of the father of the young man, who isn't a whole lot better than his son.

Note that this is not a horror movie really. It's all about the psychological torture of the girls. The guy spends what seems like hours chatting with the girl trying to make her feel at home. Yet, it's never horrific let alone entertaining to watch a villain talk non-stop with his victims. There is a bit of violence, a tiny bit of blood. What's mostly of a more out-there nature is the theme of this movie, the family relationships, it's all very adult stuff. The language is very filthy throughout the movie. But there's little violence, no gore, no nudity, nothing. It's all very dull.

If you want to know why Ashley Greene never went on to bigger things after "Twilight", this film gives you a pretty good idea. In a film peppered with mediocre performances (apart from Peter Mooney & Steven McHattie), she registers pretty low. It's hard to tell sometimes if an actor is limited by their script, but most of the time you'll find signs of promise by actors even then. It's a shame, because she brought quite a charm to the "Twilight" series that is clearly absent here. This film's strongest attributes are its use of music and cinematography. The story is nothing new either.

My girlfriend wanted to buy me a horror DVD. It was between the Orphan and Summer's moon...unfortunately she decided on Summer's moon, and boy didn't we both regret it that evening! It really is a waste of time. Sure the film was produced in a short amount of time, but so have some classic movies and without huge budgets also. I keep reading people's reviews that say how good the acting was and i had to check i was actually reviewing the same movie. Okay, maybe it wasn't the worst i have ever seen and to be fair Marlon Brando would have been hard pushed to produce any moment of clarity and substance with the script these poor actors and actresses were given! By far one of the poorest, most boring and stupid dialogues produced. The story was regurgitated trash, but not quality trash that has the honesty to realise its a bit crap and so consequently and refreshingly has a little laugh at the films expense too, but just drab nonsense with a typical big busted girl thrown in with half a recognizable name to try and help lift the films credentials and the size of the audience who may like it. Even by looking at the DVD cover art you can tell this is a bad movie. It kind of reminded me of the sort of film someone who really loved Buffy may enjoy, and there is nothing wrong with that but honestly if you like your horror/thrillers films with any element of grittyness, realism, with scary moments, honest fun, moving, violent, gory, blackly funny, unpredictable, with any original thought or seemingly any love for film making such as good photography, dialogue blah, blah, blah then this isn't going to ring your bells! Be scared...be very very scared, at how bored you may become! The movie should give away a free gift if you stay awake long enough to make it to the ending!

(2009) Summer's Blood PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

Teen, Summer Mathews (Ashely Green) entering into a small town seeking to reunite with the father she had never met, who she is later befriended by someone by Tom Hoxey (Peter Mooney) who helped her out of a jam. This someone she does know very much then intends to keep her in his home, bound and shackled, eventually exposing eventual dysfunctional of his entire family of actors Barbara Niven and Stephen McHattie.

I do not remember too much about this movie which says a lot about how much I liked this film which maybe could be garbage. In most cases if I give it a rating that low it maybe the result of the bad ending.