REEKER

US, 2005, 90 minutes, Colour.
Devon Gummersall, Tina Payne, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman, Scott Whyte, Arielle Kebbel, Michael Ironside, Eric Mabeus, Marcia Strassman.
Directed by Dave Payne.

The director has humorously pre-empted reviewers making snide reviews by including in the end credits a comment about saying that his film is a ‘stinker’. Sight and Sound were wittier in a caption for a still, ‘Smellsville’.

The Reeker here is an updated version of the Grim Reaper. His tools are far more power driven than a mere scythe. And his smell is, of course, the stench of death.

It’s a pity in so many of these films that the central characters are so unpleasant/hedonistic/amoral that it is very hard to care whether the Reeker gets them or not or in what order they go (usually in a rather Puritanical way, the most permissive gets it first). That said, there is an eerie atmosphere here as most of the action takes place at night in a deserted desert motel, ominously named ‘Halfway’ and five twentysomethings are bamboozled by mysterious sounds and part bodies and then terrorised by the Reeker. Michael Ironside who can be counted on as a regular movie heavy is in fact a pleasant character who deserves more interest and sympathy than the main group even though one of them is blind and a girl from Johannesburg (therefore, she says, it takes a lot to scare her) are more congenial.

Just when you thought the ending was going to be more than a bit flat, there is a twist that turns the whole thing into a rather grim purgatorial kind of story.

1.The tradition of the horror film? An isolated group? Menaced by the unknown? How interesting a variation on the theme?

2.The locations, the California desert? The motel? Realistic atmosphere? Eerie atmosphere? Musical score?

3.The theme of death? Death and the pursuit of its victims? The realism of the plot – and the twist at the end? The experience of death?

4.The focus on young people, an amoral group, hedonistic? Selfish? Deserving of their fate – or not? Jack and Gretchen and their being saved?

5.The prologue: the family, the mother and son playing “I Spy” in the car, the father asleep, the deer, the crash? The death? The father being savaged? Indication of themes to come?

6.Nelson and Tripp? Going on the journey? Meeting up with Gretchen and Cookie? Jack and his blindness? Tripp and his callous attitudes, the drugs, dealing with Radford? Gretchen and her severity? Allowing Tripp on, his inane comments, obtuse about Jack’s blindness? His being put out?

7.The characters: Gretchen, South African, straightforward? Cookie, out for a good time? Tripp, obtuse? Nelson, friendly, the relationship with Cookie? Jack and the story of his blindness? The journey? The motel, running out of petrol, the return? Finding it abandoned?

8.The devices of the group wandering around during the night, the empty motel, the sense of presence? The gradual attacks? The killings? How well did the film create an eerie atmosphere? Frights and shocks?

9.Radford, his pursuit of Tripp, the confrontations, his appearing and disappearing within the experience?

10.Tripp and his meeting Henry, the van, his searching for his wife? His illness? In the van? The people afraid of him, his being gentle? His death?

11.The appearance of death, eerie? The machines? The killings? The pursuit, appearance and disappearance?

12.Tripp, his death, losing his arm? Cookie and the lavatory? Nelson and his relationship with Cookie? His death?

13.Gretchen and Jack, trying to survive on the top of the van, Jack and his death?

14.The revelation of the truth? The accident? Gretchen and her driving with Jack, being prepared to risk death for life?

15.The aftermath, Gretchen and Jack surviving? The truth about the accident?

16.The title – the smell, the stench of death? A variation on the Grim Reaper?