Please see my rating system below. I am not a producer, promoter, or in any way financially attached to this film (other than I paid to buy it)
Sit down and get ready for a mix of Rambo meets Friday the 13th meets The Hills Have Eyes! The Horde is a dive in to a world of drug runners, hill folk, and a photography class outing that all come colliding together for an action/horror flick that gave me a lot I didn't expect.
As a kind of typical slasher flick, think you've seen this movie before in some iteration? Quite possibly, until we add a slight wrinkle. Not all of the campers are hapless victims, and in fact, one of them is a former Navy Seal, and BAM! suddenly we change gears into Man on Fire meets the Most Dangerous Game meets Taken.
John Crenshaw (played by Paul Logan) becomes our hero and sets out to rescue his campers and rid the world of the hideous Hill People Drug, Rape and Cannibalism Cartel (that's a joke), infamously known the world over as the HPDRCC. Logan does an excellent job with the stunts. I don't typically expect to see many if any stunts, and if there are any it's usually camera work, but in this case we had several well choreographed fight scenes. In particular, when Stone (Matthew Willig) squares off against John Crenshaw, the shots look great. NO WIRES. No fake camera, and we get to see just a couple of guys doing their own stunts and I think it plays out well.
The main bad guy, Cylus, played by Costas Mandylor comes off as your typical maniacal, egotistical, erudite, enlightened psychopath, and Mandylor just nails it. I really believe Costas should be the person playing Neegan right now in the Walking Dead. I buy his character even with the lack of dialog he has. He is the man in charge and you believe it throughout the movie.
The entire crew does their job, each one of them over-doing his or her role to the most annoying point where I am relieved to begin to see them get chopped up one by one. This is the point of the movie isn't it? I don't feel too bad when anyone dies, and some points, I'm rooting for the Hill people and I loved it! Then when I realized the hill people were sicker that heck, thanks to the role played by the immortal Vernon Wells as Earl, I begin to think they are going to get what's coming to them in the form of a John Crenshaw knife bomb to the top of the head.
Overall, if you are looking for a FUN movie, that is not afraid to pay homage to many great horror flicks in it's own way, then you'll have fun with this one. The price is right at $3 on Amazon and it's worth a Saturday night sit down. If you paid $15 to watch the Fantastic 4 that quite literally had 100 times or more the budget of this movie, and you wanted your money back like I did for that Fantastic 4 piece of garbage, $3 is a real bargain for something entertaining.
Walk in knowing what to expect, and quit expecting to get big Hollywood out of movies that are shot in just a couple of weeks, that folks barely get paid, and that isn't the umpteenth remake of a comic book I read in grade school. These movies are supposed to FUN! Have FUN and turn off your "Critic" filter and maybe just enjoy the spread!
**** My rating system **** I have rated well over 700 movies on IMDb, and written reviews for quite a few. I try to take a scientific approach and as a result, my ratings fit a bell-curve pattern as would be expected over a large sample set. I am slightly skewed on the tail (Hey, when I hate a movie I hate it) and slightly under represented on the head (Hard to find a perfect 10 IMHO).
I rate Independent flicks against independent flicks, and I rate big Hollywood against big Hollywood. It is not fair to take a movie that cost tens of thousands of dollars or less and compare it to a movie that costs 7 or 8 figures (Maybe 9!) With unlimited retakes, huge production crews, massive marketing budgets, teams of professional writers/re-writers etc. I expect more out of big Hollywood movie. I try to rate equally on story.
I like to take the time to write reviews about smaller independent movies rather than movies that 1000s of reviews as I hope some one takes what I write seriously rather than getting lost in a cacophony of similar voices.
Sit down and get ready for a mix of Rambo meets Friday the 13th meets The Hills Have Eyes! The Horde is a dive in to a world of drug runners, hill folk, and a photography class outing that all come colliding together for an action/horror flick that gave me a lot I didn't expect.
As a kind of typical slasher flick, think you've seen this movie before in some iteration? Quite possibly, until we add a slight wrinkle. Not all of the campers are hapless victims, and in fact, one of them is a former Navy Seal, and BAM! suddenly we change gears into Man on Fire meets the Most Dangerous Game meets Taken.
John Crenshaw (played by Paul Logan) becomes our hero and sets out to rescue his campers and rid the world of the hideous Hill People Drug, Rape and Cannibalism Cartel (that's a joke), infamously known the world over as the HPDRCC. Logan does an excellent job with the stunts. I don't typically expect to see many if any stunts, and if there are any it's usually camera work, but in this case we had several well choreographed fight scenes. In particular, when Stone (Matthew Willig) squares off against John Crenshaw, the shots look great. NO WIRES. No fake camera, and we get to see just a couple of guys doing their own stunts and I think it plays out well.
The main bad guy, Cylus, played by Costas Mandylor comes off as your typical maniacal, egotistical, erudite, enlightened psychopath, and Mandylor just nails it. I really believe Costas should be the person playing Neegan right now in the Walking Dead. I buy his character even with the lack of dialog he has. He is the man in charge and you believe it throughout the movie.
The entire crew does their job, each one of them over-doing his or her role to the most annoying point where I am relieved to begin to see them get chopped up one by one. This is the point of the movie isn't it? I don't feel too bad when anyone dies, and some points, I'm rooting for the Hill people and I loved it! Then when I realized the hill people were sicker that heck, thanks to the role played by the immortal Vernon Wells as Earl, I begin to think they are going to get what's coming to them in the form of a John Crenshaw knife bomb to the top of the head.
Overall, if you are looking for a FUN movie, that is not afraid to pay homage to many great horror flicks in it's own way, then you'll have fun with this one. The price is right at $3 on Amazon and it's worth a Saturday night sit down. If you paid $15 to watch the Fantastic 4 that quite literally had 100 times or more the budget of this movie, and you wanted your money back like I did for that Fantastic 4 piece of garbage, $3 is a real bargain for something entertaining.
Walk in knowing what to expect, and quit expecting to get big Hollywood out of movies that are shot in just a couple of weeks, that folks barely get paid, and that isn't the umpteenth remake of a comic book I read in grade school. These movies are supposed to FUN! Have FUN and turn off your "Critic" filter and maybe just enjoy the spread!
**** My rating system **** I have rated well over 700 movies on IMDb, and written reviews for quite a few. I try to take a scientific approach and as a result, my ratings fit a bell-curve pattern as would be expected over a large sample set. I am slightly skewed on the tail (Hey, when I hate a movie I hate it) and slightly under represented on the head (Hard to find a perfect 10 IMHO).
I rate Independent flicks against independent flicks, and I rate big Hollywood against big Hollywood. It is not fair to take a movie that cost tens of thousands of dollars or less and compare it to a movie that costs 7 or 8 figures (Maybe 9!) With unlimited retakes, huge production crews, massive marketing budgets, teams of professional writers/re-writers etc. I expect more out of big Hollywood movie. I try to rate equally on story.
I like to take the time to write reviews about smaller independent movies rather than movies that 1000s of reviews as I hope some one takes what I write seriously rather than getting lost in a cacophony of similar voices.