Wreckage, 2010.
Directed by John Mallory Asher.
Starring Aaron Paul, Justin Allen, Scoot McNairy, Kelly Kruger and Mike Erwin.
SYNOPSIS:
A group of teenagers find themselves stranded in a scrapyard after their car breaks down, where an escaped convict begins to hunt them one by one.
When I received the screener with the title emblazoned on its packaging reading WRECKAGE, I prayed to the Gods of Film that the word would not lead to some zemblanitous irony on the film’s part. Unfortunately, in many respects, it did and I found myself struggling to come to terms with exactly what I was watching; what the film’s aims and purposes were. The film had actually finished completion in 2010 and only recently secured distribution with Chelsea Films. All I can say to that is… little wonder.
The film is about four twenty-somethings – ex-soldier Jared (Mike Erwin, Chaos Theory), his fiancé Kate (Cameron Richardson, Harper’s Island), Jared’s friend Rick (Aaron Paul, The Last House on the Left) and his pregnant ball-and-chain Jessica (Kelly Kruger, The Young and the Restless) – getting into a spot of car trouble when Jared snaps a fan belt during a drag race. As fate would have it, that car just so happens to be the gang’s only mode of transportation. Ultimately it becomes a case of wait stranded on the side of a deserted road until help comes, walk all the way back home or attend an abandoned scrap yard with the hopes of finding a replacement. Throughout the night the situation descends from inconvenient to fatal as one by one the gang and good-intentioned yet inept authority figures find themselves picked off one by one.
It is a very simple plot for a very simple film. From the beginning you expect B movie thrills, no more than that. In many ways it includes B movie elements: The stranded couples are brutally attacked by the unidentifiable assailant and only aided by the local bumfuck police and retard. But other than that the film tends to stray from the conventions of the classics into something out on its own. That’s not a good thing! B movie slashers generally have a cult following of traditionalists who crave the nostalgia of the genre’s forefathers. So Wreckage was culpable of a few cardinal sins in my humble opinion. For example, it makes up for what it lacks in fiscal capability by dousing the scenes in blood leaving you wondering…”how’d he get killed?!” Slasher Rulebook, page one: make sure that the audience know the method of murder. Do not just have them spurting blood on cue; that is so uninspired. Even for a low-budget production. Slasher Rulebook, page two: SLASHER KILLERS DO NOT SHOOT GUNS! It’s called a slasher for a reason. So the killer becomes embroiled in a shootout with civilians who are, disturbingly, armed with assault rifles, then the film becomes something else – something directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone.
Clearly director John Mallory Asher (the geeky blonde kid in the Weird Science TV series) does not have an encyclopaedic grasp of the slasher movie genre but it does not take somebody who does to have noticed the plethora of reimaginings of the exact same narrative conventions in every slasher movie since the 1980s. Just stick to them, get a bit creative with the kills and you were onto a winner with the diehards. Wreckage could have easily been improved upon but it seems as if Asher’s heart is not in it and the film only serves to deliver a platter of predictability. That is, until the ending, which I enjoyed. No, this is not an attempt at some kind of clichéd joke. What I mean is the final act offers an interesting twist to proceedings and some feasible exposition leading to a creditable motive for the killer’s wrongdoings. That and the fact that the film is only mere 86 minutes long, but it is still 86 minutes of my life that I will never get back.
Daniel Davidson-Amadi (follow me on Twitter)
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