Lake Alice

As a long time collector of horror dvds/blu rays, I have come to the conclusion that eye catching cover artwork doesn't always equate to a good movie.Take lake alice,or lake tomahawk as its known in the u.k. The cover art features a blood stained and gore encrusted tomahawk smashing violently through the surface of an ice covered lake.Striking huh ? Well it was impressive enough to make me rush to the counter to pay for it. Sadly said artwork is vastly more imaginative than the movie contained within. Think of the most groan inducingly predictable slasher movie you have ever seen and then times it by two and you'll be left with 'lake alice'.Ok so not many people watch a slasher flick expecting dazzling originality, but to be as derivative as this is some feat.Originality issues aside ,'lake Alice' commits the biggest sin in horror cinema and that's being boring.Nothing happens for vast swathes of the film and when it does its largely lacking in blood,tension of anything remotely thrilling.Trust me gorehounds will get more joy out of an episode of 'dexter' and everyone else will probably be asleep come the denouement,I know I nearly was.

I only watched it for Eimeen Dietz, best know for her ultra short performance in the classic The Exorcist (1973) as Pazuzu. And she do gives the best performance in this flick. Sadly it's the only positive thing I can say.

You have to wait over half the flick before things go wrong. Before that it's all about having a Christmas diner with the family and the new lover of their daughter. Going back to the cabin do offer a few issues in town with the family. But nothing comes out of that. When you think it's going to happen, in fact, nothing happens at all. Once the terror comes in it's all low on horror and gore and the must have shower scene doesn't offer a thing too.

It did had some potential but the director chose to make it a low on everything with too much blah blah going on. Throughout the flick you will find out yourself who the killer is. There are a few twist but you won't be surprised about it.

Lake Alice is out there but not for the geeks...

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Wow, I really have no idea what movie some of the positive reviewers were watching here. This movie that clocks in at barely 80mins was painful to get through. Awkward acting, terrible editing...just bad all round.

Firstly the "action" really doesn't begin until about 65 minutes into the film at which point you're thinking to yourself "when is everything going to happen?, "At what point are people going to start dying?" By the time this does start occurring, you really don't care. I personally WANTED these unlikable characters to die..

The editing in the last 30 minutes...will make you care even less about the outcome, characters pop in and out at different environments, even for a horror, I was like "how the hell did they get here?" "Characters act more moronically than they usually would in a horror, and that's saying something. The poster of this movie looked great, hence my reason for watching it...but as the saying goes, 'Don't judge a book by its cover'...in this case, the cover is way better than the content.

As for spoilers...whatever you do, don't read the IMDb "Storyline" it essentially gives away the "big reveal" and I'm assuming the viewers who watched this movie and stated it was an unpredictable ending, hadn't read this...not that one really needs to, to guess who the killer may be.

A family consisting of mother, father, daughter and boyfriend take a retreat to a cabin at Lake Alice, Wisconsin, during the Holidays, but the joys of the season take a deadly turn when a mysterious slayer suddenly emerges.

"Lake Alice" (2018) is a modern slasher Indie in the mold of traditional slashers with the tropes thereof, e.g. The silent killer with a mask of some sort. The technical filmmaking is good except for a couple of issues. What works best is the authentic cold winter setting of northern Wisconsin. I like the whole set-up of the family returning to their home town in the rural Great Lakes region and the entertaining drama thereof. Sometimes the director spends a little too much time on a mundane scene, but I felt it established the reality of the situation, so I didn't mind.

The second half is where some weaknesses rear their heads. I didn't find the killings very convincing for the most part. For instance, when the first person is fatally attacked I giggled and thought maybe it was a prank. Most of the rest of the assaults have an unreal vibe as well and were okay at best. So the director is good at drama but needs to improve when it comes to staging action/suspense sequences. The micro-budget Indie "The Ridge" (2005) had the opposite problem: The drama of the first half is so weak it tempts the viewer to tune out, but the horrific second half wherein the killer chases the victims is superbly done.

The diff between this and "The Ridge" is that "Lake Alice" features a Whodunit angle. The first half establishes 4-5 possible suspects and the scriptwriter came up with a decent conclusion (as far as whom the killer turns out to be and the details thereof). The director just needs to work out the kinks in the attack sequences.

The movie runs 1 hour, 18 minutes, and was shot at Tomahawk in the Lake Alice region of northern Wisconsin.

GRADE: C.

Perhaps because I am a big fan of the Horror Genra I was (literally) able to predict the Killer in this film 8 minutes into it. That may be hard to believe but if you have watched as many horror films as I have, it wasn't hard. There is a slight twist which I won't disclose and spoil it for anyone so I will simply give my perspective.

I think a "5" rating is justified for this film but may be a little generous. Acting, story line, plot and sound were sub par. Twist endings are always enjoyable but this one was a bit too much. If you have to take a simple formula used 100's of times in a Horror/Thriller and add one more factor to it to say "it's original", then anyone with $25,000 can produce an "original" film I suppose. This does not, an original film, make.

If you use your head a little and pay attention to the characters introduced in the first 10 minutes of the film any true Horror fan with half a brain will see who the Killer is, quite obviously. Pay close attention to facial expressions and subtract the obvious. That is how I guessed it right probably less then 8 minutes in.

To that end, I would not "Dead-Pan" the movie completely, but, don't spend a dime on an On-Demand order or theater viewing of this film. Wait a couple months to buy it in the $3 bin at your local Walmart or Grocery store. That I would recommend.