ShangLuda
Admirable film.
Plustown
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
filippaberry84
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
BA_Harrison
After their bus crashes while on a field trip, a group of high school students—blonde bike Sommer (Hope Jaymes) and her deaf cousin Maya (Amber Zion), insensitive jock Steve (Tyler Wolfe), his brother Shawn (Jay Gillespie), token black guy Andre (Richardson Chery), token black guy number two Tyler (Jemal Draco), token tubby Harold (Christopher Raff), token Asian girl Trudy Yoo (Grace Jiyoung Park), token albino Brian (Andrew Olson), and tasty but troubled brunette Jesse (Alexandra Holder)—wander into a nearby carnival where they are hunted by an eyeless killer brandishing a pick-axe.Jack the Reaper definitely won't win any awards for originality: the whole film is extremely derivative, a supernatural teen slasher that culminates with an entirely predictable 'they were dead all along' plot-twist (which is blatantly signposted along the way: the teens are from Charon High School, their football team are The Ferriers, and the name of the road on which our characters meet their fate is Death's Door). The film is also unlikely to find much love from gore-hounds, the majority of its death scenes occurring off-screen.But as highly unoriginal and as bloodless as The Reaper undoubtedly is, I was rather surprised to find myself reasonably entertained for much of the time, thanks to its varied collection of well-developed teen characters (in the case of likable school slut Sommer, very well-developed!), a pointless but fun cameo from horror regular Tony Todd (who gets star billing), a suitably macabre setting, and a genuinely freaky killer. If only they had added some gore, some nudity, and found a less clichéd way to wrap matters up
DiCaprio74
Why would you make a film where nothing occurs within the first 60 minutes? I can see that the directors are trying to show the character development, but in a horror film, it should never take this long to show a characters development. It's a slasher script! Get to the slashing! The entire 90 minutes was crucial! You could spot the twisted ending from a mile away! The plot was also unrealistic. What group of teenage kids go to a museum what seems to be in the middle of nowhere to study the industrial revolution? Then on the way home the bus breaks down and they encounter a maniac with an pick axe? .. Kill me now! It sounds like a regular teen slasher but is really hard to stick with until the idiotic ending. It's like the whole cast was only in it for exchange of Bitcoins... There is no gore or nudity. The only type of blood in this is the blood splattered on the camera, which was clearly from visual effects. It never shows the reaper actually killing anyone and tries to take the slow walking, I'm chasing you scenes from Friday the 13th. This is definitely a B-list movie that shouldn't have ever made it to HBO. It should've been on Sy-Fy or Chiller. Do not waste your time watching this. Life is too short to spend watching crap movies such as this one.
suite92
'Charon High School:' now there is a great start, Charon being the oarsman on the boat that crosses the rivers Styx and Acheron separating the living world from the underworld. The film is a murder elimination derby, so nice telegraphing.Twenty-something actors playing teen characters in high school gather for a field trip. Heather is pregnant by a not ready for fatherhood boy. Jesse's being treated badly by her father. Various bullying pairs are present. One of the girls is deaf.All the idiots on the bus have not completed a paper about the Industrial Revolution for one of their classes. The teacher makes everything clear: do the field trip without nonsense, then pass the class. Otherwise, fail.Mr. Steele gives the first lecture at a location filled with memorabilia from the 19th century part of the Industrial Revolution. He emphasizes the dangers of the iron horse.One of the kids sees a figure by the road on the way there. Mr. Steele later identifies him as Railroad Jack, who is a reaper of sorts. If one has seen him, then he has eyes on you, and so on.On the way back, the trouble starts. The bus crashes. The f word is issued liberally. The cell phone coverage fails. The teacher is gone. The bus driver is gone.Then the kids see the 'carnival.' Sure. The kid who warns about the man she kept seeing on the way is laughed down. They find no one, they find no telephone that works. Are these clues? They get a number of the attractions to operate, and have fun for a while, but then the fun ends.Will any of these deserving teens survive? -----Scores------Cinematography: 4/10 Camera shake, washed out appearance. Seems to be only VHS quality in sunlight as well.Sound: 7/10 I could make out the spoken words. The incidental music was not the best.Acting: 4/10 All the actors portraying teens gave poor performances. Why not hire absolute amateurs of the correct age and get better performances? Tony Todd was great as usual; that's what the +4 is for.Screenplay: 4/10 Teen murder elimination derby; better than some, worse than most.SFX: 0/10 Horrible.
GL84
After getting involved in a bus crash on the way home from a field trip, a group of teens find themselves stuck at a haunted amusement park with a deranged, mystical killer killing them off one-by-one and forcing them to find an obscure method of survival.This turned out to be quite a fun and enjoyable slasher that features a lot of really exciting features. One of the better elements here is the fact that this one manages to get a lot of mileage out of the creepy amusement park setting with the nightmarish scenario of only being exposed to a few select parts of the park and no matter what continually returning to the same area over and over again, all of which just makes this seem more like a dream than anything but frankly adds to a chilling vibe that washes over this section of the film. That this is where the film pretty much starts offing the characters one-by-one in rather gruesome detail is where it starts getting really good, with a lot of rather fun and exciting elements coming into play due to that with a lot of pretty chilling stalking scenes, some decent escape attempts and a series of pretty violent deaths all brought upon due to the killer's use of a pick-axe as the weapon of choice here. It adds up, along with the rather demented killer and innate sense of hopelessness to turn into a rather fine slasher more often than not. While those are the good elements, it still suffers from some pretty big flaws, including the fact that this one tends to employ the exact same gimmick as several other films do right down to the very same mode of killing done here, which is a major plot-point but is nonetheless taken from another film series entirely and rather the back-story of the killer's identity is changed around. That tends to make it feel like a rip-off more so than as an original feature, which wouldn't be as bad if the low-budget origins weren't at play. Being so cheap means that the look of this is very cramped and confined, there's not a lot of big, extended sequences and the make-up effects don't always come off as good as they should. All-in-all, though, this one seems to have more going for it than not.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and hints of child abuse.
