The Greenskeeper

Golf is one of the worst of all possible sports, pointlessly wasteful of natural resources and harmful to the environment; country clubs, as a playground for the rich and powerful, deserve to be abolished outright. Slashers are one of the worst of all possible movie genres, not exactly being known for cleverness. For that matter the early 2000s weren't exactly a great time for cinema, as computer-generated imagery of the era was just advanced enough that everyone and their cousin wanted to make use of it, but not nearly good enough to have aged well thereafter; conceptions of music too often involved very tiresome, sterile pop and radio-friendly rock; and humor was defined by a lot of 'American pie'-like raunchiness and 'Dude, where's my car?' stoner bits, both of which are rather dull and have very limited appeal. Now put all these elements together into one supposed "horror-comedy,' and we have 2002's 'The greenskeeper.' I didn't have high expectations when I sat to watch, but for better and for worse I'll sit for almost anything. The opening scene seems kind of promising, and the film quickly gives us a large roster of awful, obnoxious, privileged white characters that we'll be glad to see sent off to the sand trap of eternity - but otherwise, in all earnestness, this swiftly grows tiresome.

Given that the whole bent here is far less than serious, I suppose it's only fair to wonder if it's not on purpose that everything is so over the top and kitschy, and so pointedly betrays the falseness of the presentation. Are filmmakers Kevin Greene, Adam Johnson, Tripp Norton, and Alex Wier making fun of all these tropes and ideas, or using them for lack of any other creativity, substance, or means? It's a fair question, I think, as our attention is caught in the wrong way by the dialogue, characters, scene writing, and narrative; the attempted humor, the tawdrily boorish and obnoxious sensibilities about sexuality and anatomy; the direction, too much of the acting, the rather bare-faced production values, and cinematography and editing that are only ever unremarkable or outrageous with no middle ground; plain art direction, overbearing music, and aspects of homophobia, racism, and classism. Then again, maybe it's not even a question that really matters, for whether all this is employed in jest or as a sincere expression of film-making, it's just not any fun. In one fashion or another some small moments come off better than others, but I definitely didn't laugh once in eighty-two minutes. I've seen the bottom of the barrel, and this isn't it, but there simply isn't any actual entertainment to be had here.

I guess the practical effects are well done, including blood and gore. The costume design, hair, and makeup are nice, such as they are. The root story in and of itself is decent, if truly nothing special. Despite the worst efforts of all involved, Melissa Ponzio turns in a performance that is fairly admirable. But is there anything else here that's baseline commendable? Is there anything about this that is meaningfully enjoyable? I don't think there is. If you're desperate for slasher fare, juvenile humor circa 2000, nudity, or "horror-comedy," then I guess you'll find what you're looking for. Yet what possible other reason would anyone have to watch this, especially since we could be watching literally anything else instead? What's really terrible is that the only reason I found this in the first place was because the 2018 'Ducktales' episode "The missing links of Moorshire!" was so outstanding that I found myself wondering about other horror or fantasy involving golf; finding this, in turn, feels like the classic notion of a genie granting a wish, but with awful, ironic consequences. There are much worse things one could watch, sure, but for as bland and pretty much outright boring as 'The greenskeeper' is, the distinction doesn't count for much. Check it out if you like, but I don't know why you would.

I FINALLY got to see this movie. I was looking forward to it but was thoroughly disappointed. The plot, if any was there, was lame and tired at best. The acting was below sub-par (for the corpse). The directing was too choppy with jagged scene shifts and the lighting and audio need help. I would not recommend this double-bogey movie to anyone.

IMDb lists this as 90 minutes, but the version I saw on a British DVD (in a boxed set of individually unsellable horror films) barely got to 77 minutes. Was it cut? Since the boxed set had an 18 rating anyway (strictest in the UK apart from porn films) it's hard to know what the motivation for cutting it could be. Like censors anywhere, those in the UK can be a bit crotchety, but policies are pretty liberal nowadays and it's hard to believe that they could have found thirteen minutes' worth of cuts that needed to be made.

Well, cut or not, what was this like? The last few minutes – and especially a silly and gruesome joke about a lawn sprinkler – just start to hint at a comic inventiveness that is miserably lacking from the rest of the film. Other than that, the reviews of the various people here who "hated it" look pretty accurate to me, and they were probably seeing a longer film. British viewers, check out the box. If it says 77 minutes, I certainly can't recommend this.

The Greenskeeper is an emotionally shattering experience that will undeniably open your eyes to what cinema can TRULY be. It isn't so much the character's usage of booze or crack, but rather, the emotion that the Greenskeeper conveys that truly sets him apart from your standard slasher villain. The subtle, nuanced performance by John Rocker will captivate the viewer and draw you into the mind of a disturbed, misunderstood soul. When the film is finally released to the general public, do not be surprised if you hear Oscar buzz soon building, not only for Rocker, but for the rest of the exceptional cast as well. In particular, the character of Otis Washington is played marvelously by Thomas Merdis, although it fails to match his prior performance in My Cousin Vinny as The Man in Town Square, which I am positive everyone remembers. All in all this film can only be described as brilliant, although if I were to TRULY and ACCURATELY sing it's praises, I would be sitting here typing all night... Don't miss this mindblowing combination of sex, drugs, and Rocker.

I Don't know what to think about this one, first off the acting is kinda split, there are some okay actors and others are bad, but I would not call it good acting. I actually thought the directing was "good" and the script wasn't bad either, so there are some pluses! But one thing I didn't like at all was the ending I thought it was way to much like a scobby doo ending instead of a horror movie ending. This movie didn't have wonderful character development either, I really didn't care about the characters. There are some funny parts, so that helps out the movie. It is a bit gory also, nothing shockingly gory but it has its gory moments! So on a final note I'm going to give this movie a 5.5/10 MAYBE a 6 but probably a 5.5/10