After Dark Horror Fest 4: The Reeds

A group of six young adults rent a boat for a weekend to go out in the marshes. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, your boat could be trashed and all the other boats be out for the weekend.

But wait! The old boat rental guy has an old boat he doesn't rent out much but will let you have if you want. Great. Weekend saved. Nothing else could possibly go wrong, right?

Well, your boat could be covered with recalcitrant teenagers. Including the one that ran out in front of your car on the way in.

But wait! You offer them some beers and they go away. So, now you're good to go. Nothing else could possibly go wrong, right?

Well, you could get lost. There's nothing out there as far as the eye can see and the reeds make a kind of maze. And of course your cell phones don't work. And there's all this junk at the bottom of the marsh that might just end up wrecking your boat.

But that's gotta be it, right? It's not like there's anything in the reeds to worry about. Except maybe those kids who seem to be able to show up wherever you go ahead of you, and without needing any cars or boats or fancy things like that.

And of course, some of your friends (or you) could end up dead.

So, basically, this is a typical vacation movie.

Seriously, this is a reasonably well-executed movie that throws in a lot of miscues to create some mystery and horror around what's basically a straight ghost story.

The problem with a movie like this is that it throws all these cues out about what the movie's about, and doesn't follow through with them. Like, you might think that the boat was significant, since the movie makes a point of that boat being the only one available. Like, if the only place to spend the night is the creepy motel outside the city limits, you expect that creepy motel to factor into things.

But the boat never does. And there's nothing in the reeds, at least nothing like the camerawork implies. In the end, it's a ghost story. There's a twist with the lead, but I saw it coming, well, almost immediately.

In the end, I was pretty satisfied, though the multiple distractions bored me a bit.

And then, they screwed it up in the last 2 seconds again. The movie's end is pretty good, but the stinger throws the whole damn thing into question, makes no freakin' sense, and can't even be described as a plausible lead-in for a sequel.

Pointless. Pissed us off, too. Otherwise, The Boy rather liked it.