Husk

Even the crows weren’t scared . . .

Swift shot: Not scary, somewhat imaginative, but overall an unimpressive film.

Husk starts out with a group of college kids stranded in the middle of nowhere (sound familiar?), with no cell signals (sound familiar?), and no common sense.  Following a car accident caused by a murder of crows, they all wake up after being unconscious for an inordinate amount of time – but discover they are a man down.  For reasons that I can’t remember, and I really found I didn’t care – they assume he walked into this vast, endless cornfield.  So, they all head in to find him, all but the driver who decides to stick with his SUV in hopes someone will drive by and be able to help.

The motley crew of hapless victims making up the cast of Husk are: the jock, Brian (Wes Chatham); the nerd, Scott (Devon Graye); the first to die, Johnny (Ben Easter); the coward, Chris (C.J. Thomason); and the hot girl, Natalie (Tammin Sursok).  The plot is essentially this, and if I spoil something for you here, I apologize, but I just can’t think of anything else to say.

There is like a farmer who has a good son and an evil son, and the evil son (shocker) kills the good son, but to hide the body he makes a scarecrow mask and turns his dead brother into a scarecrow.  At some point, they all die or something, and this evil spirit re-enacts the murder of his brother through new souls – in this case, our crew of college kids.

How all these things are revealed is what I didn’t like, Scott keeps having visions, but unlike a Stephen King story, we’re never let in on how he has this ability, is it just that he is weaker, is it he’s psychic, is it his glasses . . . well, they never tell you.  This is one of those films where they want you to constantly guess at what shit means – and I just didn’t care.  The overall delivery made no sense.  For some reason, I never did figure out, the mask makers had to nail their hands to the sewing machine – for some reason, the farmer character was in and out of the visions, but there was never a resolution for him – and if there was, I missed it.

The editing and directing were solid, the acting was good as well, it was the story that lacked the stuffing to make a decent flick.  See, for horror movies with a supernatural slant, they really must have a solid story to keep me interested.  Real horror surrounds us everyday now, so for the metaphysical to be effective, it needs to be either somewhat believable or incredibly interesting.  Special recognition goes out to Marco Fargnoli whose cinematography made the film somewhat interesting.  Director Brett Simmons wrote this thing, and while his directing was solid with the performances he got out of his team, he should stick to that aspect of the industry and find others to create the stories.

There was ONE scary scene, where a smiling scarecrow is peeking his head out of the corn, staring at you, the viewer, and people that are maskaphobic may piss themselves – but it did nothing for me other than to make me realize the grin on the mask was chilling and they should have incorporated more of that in the film.  I caught this on SyFy, and while I am glad I didn’t waste money, I am pissed I wasted two hours time.