I really wanted to like this, not least because I'm a big fan of that vanishing and venerable phenomenon, the drive-in. Alas, I've come away with a mixed reaction.
The overall conceit---a postapocalyptic drive-in run by mutants, zombies, and the undead for a similar clientèle---is a fun one for a horror film. I've been left sitting in the last car present in a drive-in in the middle of the night, and a deserted one that's still running in real life is creepy enough, let alone one that's at the end of the world. Best, this fictional drive-in features what few real drive-ins do today---that staple of yesteryear, the B movie.
The problem is that we have some F movies included in this anthology.
In that category, I'd have to put the first film, "Pig." I believe the filmmakers fancy it to be in the company of such revenge films as "Last House on the Left" or "I Spit on Your Grave," but for a variety of reasons, the comparisons don't work. The film started on a hopeful, if low-budget, note (the frat's front door reads Delta Omega Alpha--D.O.A.). But that's just about the last I liked of it, except for the fact of how the woman managed to get the man into the position he's in--a nicely ironic touch. The actors do their best with what they've been given, which isn't much. The female lead has been given a load of vituperative histrionics, and the film quickly degenerates into a lot of shouted imprecations and ceaseless torture. The film suffers further from the fact that the timing of the first half is all wrong, and I started to get the giggles because of it. This vignette isn't scary, suspenseful, or triumphal---it's alternately gross, depressing, preposterous, and annoying.
"The Closet," about an unhappy boy of the Space Age, is rather better. The characters are over-the-top and unidimensional, but they are intended to be. Although one can see the end coming, it's nicely done. The boy playing the lead is surprisingly good for such a young actor. My main quibbles with the film are some poor pacing and some anachronisms (for example, glaringly, the cell phone; less so, the answering machine). Surely the writers know some people over the age of 50---they should have tried talking to them before committing images to film, especially since some of the set dressing (such as the lighted globe) was really good.
"Fall Apart" isn't big on action or plot, but it isn't meant to be. (My one argument with that fact is the plot threads that start and then go nowhere. Why?) The main character is likable enough, and he meets a terrible fate, which is the point of this one. It's a gross-out effects film, which starts creepily and builds to total nastiness, and the effects are well done. Unfortunately, the budget seems to have gone largely to making those effects; the small budget shows excessively elsewhere.
Of all the films, "Meat Man" may be closest to the creepy films and mags of the drive-in's heyday. It's certainly close to the real sorts of scary tales and rumors we told each other as children. The script, direction, and editing are crisp and well paced. The way these kids think is spot-on. Even the preposterous game they play with the freezer is on target---it's exactly the kind of game (that makes no sense to adults) that kids would invent. The child actors do a wonderful job portraying the brothers. Overall, I liked it. (But what did I miss at the beginning? What was with the Frankenstein monster in the bushes?)
Finally, "The Watcher" is 99% unwatchable. If Dark Carnival, the film festival I saw this at, had stuck to its schedule, and shown this one last, I'd have gone home after the few shots of some spectacular scenery, and caught one of my TV shows instead. The makers claim it was inspired by such classics as TCM, but there is nothing here of what made TCM a landmark film in the genre. The characters are unengaging, and there isn't a bright bulb in the marquee. These have to be THE stupidest characters I have ever seen in a film, and that includes the recent "Timber Falls." There is nothing scary or disturbing here, except perhaps the notion that "starring" on "Survivor" is an entrée to the film business.
The bits in between the vignettes are not particularly funny, but the guy playing The Projectionist does so with enthusiastic, committed glee, and the concessionaire Teenage Axe Victim is an inspired touch. There are plenty of trilogy-formatted B films, and I think that "Drive-In Horrorshow" could benefit by becoming one, that is, lose the first and the last vignette.
