Director Lee Demarbre brings us the story of Summer (Ashley Greene), who discovers her mom has been lying to her for years about who her father is. After confronting her about a letter she'd found from her father, she sets out on a cross country journey to find him. She soon has a run in with the law and much to her amazement, a local handyman, Tom (Peter Mooney), helps her escape. She is quickly charmed by him and accepts his invitation to spend the night. As she tries to sneak out the next morning, he informs her that she can't leave. Now, taken prisoner by a demented stranger, her dream of finding her father has come to an end and a nightmare has begun.
This film was originally entitled Summer's Blood but was changed to Summer's Moon to no doubt cash in on Greene's Twilight fame. I haven't seen any of the Twilight Series so I had no idea who she was until I read her bio. (What? Not all girls love pasty vampires and their shirtless werewolf foes.)
I have several problems with this film.
1)THE SCRIPT: Terribly bland and completely smothered with one cliche after another. However, it did seem to get a little better as the movie progressed. I'm not sure what Travis Stevens and Sean Hogan were thinking with that opening dialogue. I kept hoping it would tie in, and it did, but it was so far into the movie that you'd already forgotten about the opening sequence.
2)STORYLINE: The storyline of Tom is completely ridiculous. There are so many things, i.e. conversations and scenes, that easily could've been left out and it probably would've made the film better. Audiences like to know what's going on but you don't have to ram it down our throats. Slow and steady wins the race.
3)ENDING: From about 20 to 30 minutes in, you know exactly how things are going to turn out. BUT, they do throw in a little twist at the end that I didn't see coming.
4)GENRE: I'm not sure who actually decides what category movies go in these days but this one was way off. I didn't see anything in this movie that qualified it as a horror movie. If it was intended to be horror-ish, it was an extremely sophomoric attempt at horror. I would call it a suspense/thriller if anything. There was like 5 seconds of gore and here it is....
That's brain matter by the way. Yes, someone gets brained but not in a Jason Voorhees way.
Things get way more interesting when Daddy (Stephen McHattie) comes home and from that point on, the movie kinda shapes up. Unfortunately, it's well into the third act so most people would already be bored.
There were some decent performances by Greene, Barbara Niven and of course McHattie but he's always great. Mooney isn't a very convincing psychopath and comes off as more of a pussy cat most of the time.
Overall, not a bad film but not great either. It's a toss up. The build up was slow but once it got going, it never really slows down. There's alot of differing opinions on the ending but I thought it was rather good. Not sure that I would watch it again but it was.... ok.
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