Valley of Ditches

Valley of Ditches is an interesting film, it's premise is good, it looks solid for it's small budget and it immediatly got my attention.

It tells the story of a young couple who are kidnapped by a religious nutcase who proceeds to kill the boyfriend and handcuff his girlfriend to his corpse. Being left for dead in a ditch can she find a way to escape and find her way through the desert to safety?

After the credits rolled the first thing I thought is how strange the film was structured. It has the opening and then before you know it we're presented with the finale but there is little inbetween. The film has no substance, it's merely has a concept.

For an obscure little thriller it's a passable attempt but its poor pacing damages it, it almost feels like it doesn't have a "Point". Though the films ending is deeply satisfying it doesn't make up for the lack of content, did it need an additional 30 minutes? Maybe, or alternatively just better writers.

The Good:

Great finale

Interesting concept

The Bad:

Some of the cutaway scenes are pointless

Dreadfully structured

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The fact that so many religious antagonists exist in movies shows Hollywood is aware of the problem

Of all the escape methods I'd thought of, that wasn't one of them

I don't know what the filmmakers were thinking with this convoluted mess. Emilia(Amanda Todisco) is sitting in a van with her boyfriend at the start of the film, asking him what does he think happens to us when we die. Such a deep thinker, Emilia. Oh well, the young lady winds up duct taped, sitting in a car and chewing on the tape in an attempt to escape a bad man. The ditch in the title, is indeed, in a valley. Emilia lands up in a ditch with her boyfriend and what follows, with many flashbacks to a mean daddy and an unexplained fantasy sequence with the victim tied at the wrists and feet and blood dripping from her mouth. Mercifully, this tedious work of amateurs is only eighty minutes. I would suggest that viewers dig up an old DVD of the "Twilight Zone" or "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to see how to handle suspense properly.