Sam's Lake

Do not watch this pitiful excuse for a horror movie. There is a reason it took four years to hit the video shelves and it is not because it's good!

Do not believe the DVD box when it tells you this is a supernatural horror film. It is not. It's a wooded stalk and slash picture with bad pacing. Lion's Gate also tries to trick little girls into watching this by boldly proclaiming that it's from the producers of Twilight.

Sam's Lake is totally boring as hell! Literally the whole first half of the movie is taken up by insipid conversations amongst this dull assemblage of college students. The first plot point (the event that changes the direction of and gets to the meat of a film) occurs halfway through, an amazingly amateurish move on the part of the filmmakers.

The second half got my eyeballs rolling as the film's revelations turn out to be both predictable and stupid.

2009) Sam's Lake HORROR

A young female teen, Sam (Fay Masterson) learns about her father's demised and decides to cheer herself up by bringing her and her friends over for a visit to the lake she used to grew up in, including the fact that it was also named after her, hence the title "Sam's Lake". Movie relies on many of flashbacks switching between the current time and past and so forth. This is yet another one of those films where friends, eventual victims don't ask a whole a lot of questions allowing themselves to become victims themselves, making the credibility to be dumb, stupid and predictable. One of it's selling points on the cover case says that it was 'Inspired by a true-mystery-turned-legend surrounding the massacre near Sam's Lake'- I'm like, at what parts is that specifically for, the actual commercial movie case does not say.

If you're a huge horror fan like me, you know you run low on options sometimes. This site comes in handy when you come across an obscure one that you don't know anything about. Good way of saving time and avoiding the train-wrecks. Anyhow, I went against the overwhelmingly bad reviews. Something about friends doing road trips to secluded places..that campy experience..nothing supernatural involved...right up my alley. Figured what the hell, I'll give it 15 minutes. Long story short, I loved this damn movie. I loved the characters. For amateur actors, they did a hell of a job. And the twist...the twist got me. Horror movies are so cliché now, you can guess the twist long before it happens. I guess it's that I just didn't see any reason to suspect a twist. The movie was so straightforward. You can usually see them coming from a mile away. Not this time. If any of you have ever seen "Adam & Evil"..It has terrible reviews on here too but I loved it. Same general plot, not as good as this though. Bottom line: Obviously I'm in the minority, but I'm not an idiot. I've seen probably a thousand horror movies. I know garbage when I see it. That said, I loved this movie. Give it a shot if you come across it. Find it on the internet or at the bottom of a clearance rack DVD bin. You might be surprised. PS. I gave it a 10 just based on the principle. People throwing 1 star ratings at it is absurd. So count me in on the absurdity.

I realize Sam's Lake isn't anything quite like Crystal Lake, but still I was secretly hoping that Jason Voorhees would pop out of the water during one of the numerous boring moments and increase the bloodshed and body count a little. No such luck, unfortunately, as "Sam's Lake" is a fairly pretentious and wannabe clever thriller instead of just an amusing and undemanding slasher. The opening sequences of this film are exactly the same as the opening sequences of approximately 7.500 other horror films, with a group of friends heading out to a remote middle-of-nowhere forest area for a weekend of fun and laughter. The only slight difference here maybe is that the main characters aren't sex-addicted teenagers but losers in their early thirties with dysfunctional backgrounds. There's very little going on during the first 45 minutes, except the atmospheric narration of a local urban legend campfire tale about a mentally unbalanced young boy who escaped from the asylum and returned to the area to slaughter his family members. The events further in the film are obviously related to this local legend, but not exactly like you would expect. The group stupidly decides to explore the murder's ramshackle cabin and find a journal that sheds a disturbing new light on the urban myth. If you manage to struggle through this incredibly dull film (though there are a couple of nice shots of leaves floating on the lake's surface), there's an essential plot twist after about an hour of playtime. Admittedly this particular twist is quite original and unpredictable, but it's probably also the single most implausible thing I've ever seen. Also, the twist may give a powerful short energy boost to the film, but the finale is a tedious and confusing mess again. I think I must have stopped paying attention to the story lines, because all of a sudden a Rob Zombie look-alike showed up. What the hell? The murder sequences are tame and most of them occur off-screen, which is the one thing that every horror fanatic hates. "Sam's Lake" is boring and largely derivative with only a small handful of notable moments. Hardly a movie to recommend.

There wasn't anything profound here, but the refreshing thing, especially compared to the mountains and mountains of pure drivel out there which are considered 'HORROR' films these days, is that for it's very simple and straight forward story, it is done very well. I mean, REALLY... How many times do we see films where groups of young people go off somewhere and not ONE of them could act their way out of their own @ss crack...? Plenty. I really liked the calm and understated job they all did in their performances; that alone was quite refreshing. And it was directed in a very competent manner with nothing overdone or over-stylized. Just straight forward Suspense / Horror with a nice little 'Creep' factor towards the end.

Like I say, there is nothing that is gonna make you hafta change your pants or anything, and if you are one of these 'HORROR' fans who loves tons of torture and gore, you most likely will be quite bored; a feeling apparently shared by some of the 1-star reviews here. But, if you can appreciate a low key story that is well done, than you should enjoy this one. There's not anything that really stands out as far as the mood, style, or cinematography that sets it way above other Horror films, BUT... compared to the HUGE volume of Horror crap that we have to wade through these days, I feel that the film was put together rather well and deserves a higher rating than what it has.

I guess you might say that I am grading this one on a slight curve...