Prowl (2011)

Simply A Masterpiece

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Brilliant!

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

You can't really blame Amber (Courtney Hope) for wanting to leave her old life. She hates her jobs, her parents are useless and her friends are exactly the kind of idiots films like this can rarely do without: beautiful, beer swilling, joint smoking, lightly horny teens. So she decides to leave. She and her shallow pals hitch a ride in the back of a truck, which they are told is not strictly legal a practise, and so naturally, once in the back and sharing the space with driver Bernard's (Bruce Payne) cargo, they're swilling beer, smoking joints and getting intimate. Tuneless rock music, the wallpaper of such twits, is ubiquitous. So when Bernard displays erratic driving and shows no sign of stopping at their Chicago destination, or anywhere else, a little designer panic cracks their collective veneer.I'm being overly crusty: these youths are no worse than the swathe of other film-makers' ideas of what the young are like. It is just so frustrating that the audience is asked to sympathise/empathise with such dull, mundane, always cocky braggarts. No variation, nothing to say of any interest; they're feeling bored because they are boring, put pretty enough for any real heartache to appear – rightly or wrongly – as entirely superficial.Curious, they investigate the cargo and open one of the many boxes. Finding it leaking blood, they are then less than happy to find the truck stopping at what appears to be a slaughterhouse. Soon we meet Bernard's boss Veronica (Saxon Trainor). She is a pouting diva who, if she had a moustache would be twirling it. Unluckily for the hapless pretties, she is the head of a group of vampires.This film is well produced, it ticks all the right boxes, the abattoir environment is very effective and the idea of it being a breeding ground for vampires is a good one. But just imagine if the gang of good guys weren't idiots – imagine if they actually had personalities and were likable? Only Amber emerges as someone interesting and memorable, and as the ending reveals, there's a very good reason for that. Enjoyable, but contains little to separate it from other slasher films.

Prowl – CATCH IT (C+) Prowl is one of those indie horrors which are good till the 3rd act. Prowl revolves around a group of 6 friends who go on road trip to Chicago to help a friend Amber paying her new apartment rent. In the middle of the road there car broke down and they take a lift from a truck driver. The journey starts calmly but later when they see the truck has changed his path and going off the road they start panicking and then the whole nightmare starts. Prowl does manage to create enough scares and deliver decent performances by all actors Courtney Hope, Ruta Gedmintas, Joshua Bowman, Bruce Payne , Jamie Blackley, Oliver Hawes, George Oliver, Saxon Trainor and Perdita Weeks. In the end, it does feel like a drag since we don't know the origin or reason of the creatures. Are they breed of Zombies, Vampires etc. so, just some cannibalistic human race with super strength is little too much.

In Famfield, the teenager Amber (Courtney Hope) feels displaced and dreams on moving to Chicago. When she learns that she is the foster daughter of her mother, she decides to move to the big city. Amber has a short schedule to pay the rent of an apartment in Chicago and she convinces her friends to travel with her to the windy city. However the van breaks down and they hitchhike on the road. The truck driver Bernard (Bruce Payne) offers a ride to the group but they need to travel inside the back of a semi. Bernard does not stop the truck and they realize that they have been kidnapped. When he finally stops and opens the semi, they find that they are inside a dirty warehouse. Sooner they are hunted by fast blood-thirsty creatures and their leader Veronica (Saxon Trainor) discloses a secret to Amber."Prowl" is a collection of clichés, with the traditional group of teenagers that are abducted and brought to a remote area and are attacked by creatures very similar to those in "30 Days of Night". The only difference is the twist in the end when Amber learns that she is one of them, but it is not enough to make the film good. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "A Armadilha" ("The Trap")

Essentially Prowl is another splatter flick... actually if there was no minimum review length that would pretty much summarize it.The protagonist hitches a ride; her friends are there too because really, the film doesn't have enough substance to support just said protagonist trying to survive. Actually most characters don't last long once the threat appears. That makes the earlier parts seem like padding, which explains why I can't remember much about these people. There was humor during the earlier parts but things quickly get bland.In short, some quasi-vampires arrive and start killing everyone, naturally a couple of would-be victims escape. Then those people must figure out what's going on. Even with its short runtime things got boring toward the finale.