re:mote voices

Title:Reeker
Cast: Devon Gummersall, Tina Payne, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman, Scott Whyte, Arielle Kebbel, Michael Ironside
Director: Dave Payne

"I spy with my little eye something beginning with F"
"F? I give up."
"Dad's fart!"

More or less that is the dialogue that opens this American horror film Reeker, the third of five shown in the FrightNight series at the Glasgow Film Festival. After starting with a fart joke, and calling the film Reeker, and then having a horrifying incident where a family appear to be brutalized by a bad smell, the end notes have the cheek to suggest that people avoid saying that this film stinks. Well, I guess after the film already belaboured the point it would be the height of lazyness, though when has that ever stopped anyone?

After the stereotypical opening scene of the horror film where something bad happens to disposable characters just to establish that bad things will happen, we gather a group of students who are car sharing as they travel into the desert to go to the biggest rave of the year. Half way there, the group stop at a motel, the place has been abandoned in a Mary Celeste fashion. The group find this to be creepy, but with the lack of petrol, and half heard radio reports suggesting that thier has been some kind of toxic incident they are offered little choice. As one would expect the group are picked off one by one, a bad smell accompanying each death. There is an undertone of something truly sinister going on here, flashes of figures, blood stained motel rooms, all building towards revelation.

The Reeker comes out as this flitting, sinister figure. The thing behind the smell. At the climax we are offered a twist, some attempt to make this more than run of the mill. Unfortunately, that twist is pretty much an ending I have seen to some degree in at least 4 other films (the listing of which would of course be a give away). For the most part this is a gorey low budget horror film, delighting in its tackyness. The real reason we watch something like Reeker though is that it knows what it is, and incoporates a definite humour into the process. The humour being what makes it worth watching, with a UK release pencilled in for the summer of this year.