Sam's Lake (2005)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

If you're a huge horror fan like me, you know you run low on options sometimes. This site comes in handy when you come across an obscure one that you don't know anything about. Good way of saving time and avoiding the train-wrecks. Anyhow, I went against the overwhelmingly bad reviews. Something about friends doing road trips to secluded places..that campy experience..nothing supernatural involved...right up my alley. Figured what the hell, I'll give it 15 minutes. Long story short, I loved this damn movie. I loved the characters. For amateur actors, they did a hell of a job. And the twist...the twist got me. Horror movies are so cliché now, you can guess the twist long before it happens. I guess it's that I just didn't see any reason to suspect a twist. The movie was so straightforward. You can usually see them coming from a mile away. Not this time. If any of you have ever seen "Adam & Evil"..It has terrible reviews on here too but I loved it. Same general plot, not as good as this though. Bottom line: Obviously I'm in the minority, but I'm not an idiot. I've seen probably a thousand horror movies. I know garbage when I see it. That said, I loved this movie. Give it a shot if you come across it. Find it on the internet or at the bottom of a clearance rack DVD bin. You might be surprised. PS. I gave it a 10 just based on the principle. People throwing 1 star ratings at it is absurd. So count me in on the absurdity.

This is the most insane horror movie that I have seen, but I liked it. The murderers are a serial killer brother and sister that are the son and daughter of a serial killer. When they were kids, their dad had them invite their friends over to the woods near their cabin and the three of them would hunt them down and kill them because their motto is that the dark sleep brings them closer to each other. They end up doing the same thing as adults while avoiding their dad who wants to kill them. This did have a lot of violence, but not very much gore compared to other R rated horror flicks which is fine with me because I care more about the plot than the amount of violence.

I realize Sam's Lake isn't anything quite like Crystal Lake, but still I was secretly hoping that Jason Voorhees would pop out of the water during one of the numerous boring moments and increase the bloodshed and body count a little. No such luck, unfortunately, as "Sam's Lake" is a fairly pretentious and wannabe clever thriller instead of just an amusing and undemanding slasher. The opening sequences of this film are exactly the same as the opening sequences of approximately 7.500 other horror films, with a group of friends heading out to a remote middle-of-nowhere forest area for a weekend of fun and laughter. The only slight difference here maybe is that the main characters aren't sex-addicted teenagers but losers in their early thirties with dysfunctional backgrounds. There's very little going on during the first 45 minutes, except the atmospheric narration of a local urban legend campfire tale about a mentally unbalanced young boy who escaped from the asylum and returned to the area to slaughter his family members. The events further in the film are obviously related to this local legend, but not exactly like you would expect. The group stupidly decides to explore the murder's ramshackle cabin and find a journal that sheds a disturbing new light on the urban myth. If you manage to struggle through this incredibly dull film (though there are a couple of nice shots of leaves floating on the lake's surface), there's an essential plot twist after about an hour of playtime. Admittedly this particular twist is quite original and unpredictable, but it's probably also the single most implausible thing I've ever seen. Also, the twist may give a powerful short energy boost to the film, but the finale is a tedious and confusing mess again. I think I must have stopped paying attention to the story lines, because all of a sudden a Rob Zombie look-alike showed up. What the hell? The murder sequences are tame and most of them occur off-screen, which is the one thing that every horror fanatic hates. "Sam's Lake" is boring and largely derivative with only a small handful of notable moments. Hardly a movie to recommend.

This film uses the tried-and-true gimmick of putting a bunch of young people together in a wilderness cabin and then terrorizing them. It is not terribly original in this way. However, as a film, it succeeds where many Hollywood attempts at this same thing fail as the story is taut, accomplishes the goal of creating anxiety, and has a bit of a different twist on who is behind the terror and why. All the actors are unknown, but do a decent job. While the film is low-budget, it looks okay. Those seeking a really scary and unique experience with lots of blood and scares will be disappointed. If you are bored and cannot find anything else at the video store and you want an okay experience with this stock type of film you should be satisfied. As far as films, and particularly horror films go, this one is no where near the top, but it is nowhere near the bottom where the stupid, silly, and goofy lie.