Munger Road

This movie Could have been Great! It's really creepy! It's well acted! It's well directed! The music is astoundingly good! St. Charles, Illinois never looked so good on the big-screen! However, watching Munger Road is kind of like watching The Blair Witch Project with the last 10 minutes of the film missing. The film is missing a conclusion. Munger Road does a wonderful job of creating tension, suspense and then pops all of that beautiful momentum like a balloon in your face without even attempting an adequate, plausible, or even fantastic explanation. It just ends! Which is really a big let down because most of this film is really good. So it you don't mind watching a good horror movie without an ending by all means check out Munger Road.

"Munger Road" doesn't break much new ground, but it covers the old ground nicely. Two St. Charles students (Trevor Morgan and Hallock Beals) get a video camera so they can go out with their dates (Brooke Peoples and Lauren Storm), to the tracks on Munger Road to check for supernatural activity. The car engine mysteriously dies and the four kids are marooned in the middle of nowhere.

From John Carpenter's "Halloween," director/writer Nick Smith appropriates the escaped serial killer plot, plus pays homage to the opening-scene tracking shot by having a cop investigate a dark house through a point-of-view camera.

Smith also lifts the swinging ceiling lamp effect from Hitchcock's "Psycho" and briefly the making-a-documentary premise from "The Blair Witch Project" which it stole from "Cannibal Holocaust."

So, don't go to see "Munger Road" for originality.

Go to witness how Smith and his young conspirators (including Polish composer Wojciech Golczewski with his edgy, alarming score) transform the sleepy little community of St. Charles into the scariest Illinois town since Michael Myers roamed fictional Haddonfield.

Had this movie sitting in my Netflix account for months, because it looked interesting, and the desperation to find some really good horror films. Went to it last night and stayed with it, then got into it, then it's abrupt ending. It brought up some remembrances of Jaws, Halloween, and yes I have no use for those films where you only have the view of one of the characters holding a camera. If the director meant to end the film this way, bad, bad, bad. Just about everything was left hanging. More should have been resolved. If his intention was to do a sequel, but the money dried up, then I'm sorry. You were getting there but it ended badly.

On the eve of the annual Scarecrow Festival, two St. Charles police officers (Randall Batinkoff and Bruce Davison) search for a return killer the same night four teenagers go missing on Munger Road.

Let me sum up everything good about this film in two words: Bruce Davison. The man is a legend, from "Willard" on down. That he has had to appear in low budget horror films to pay the rent (or at least to keep building a resume) is a sad, sad thing. (And not unique to Bruce, of course -- Robert Englund, Jeffrey Combs, and everyone else is doing it...)

The part with the kids? Who cares? A bunch of dumb kids, no better than you will find in every other horror film. But the cops, they actually had a bit of an interesting plot going on...

There are a LOT of stories, films, and documentaries about Munger Road. Watch something else. This movie has no ending. It was good until then. The missing ending did nothing but anger us and made us hate the entire movie. Here's a tip. People rarely like to wait a week to see the conclusion of a TV series "to be continued". I sure as hell don't want it in a movie. I don't care if I've spoiled it for those who haven't seen it. I hope they don't watch it specifically because this movie HAS NO ENDING. Screw that. I won't be watching a "sequel" either because now I don't care one fig what happened to any of those people. It had good acting. It was directed well. Proved to be scary at times. But will I watch it again or watch a sequel? NOT A CHANCE. Will I recommend it to others? NO WAY! I gave it one star because I had to give it a star. DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE unless you LIKE being left hanging without resolution.