Red Canyon (2008)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Okay, so I decided to watch this movie because it has my favorite actor Justin Hartley from This Is Us, who plays Kevin Pearson in that show (and quite well, I might add). I knew this was going to be bad based on what I'd read but I thought maybe it would at least be fun to watch. It was not.It was just plain bad. Not "so bad it was good." Just awful. There was literally nothing good about it. Don't watch it. Don't even think about it. Go do something else instead. Pretty much anything else would be a better use of your time.

I don't know why great actor as Norman accepted to play in such ridiculous movie. It's more than terrible, it's awful! Not even one good scene, no atmosphere, no plot... I wonder why someone gave money this to be filmed. Hour and a half absolutely waste of time! It's worst than teen drama, it's not even a horror, it's some kind of joke! Forget watching this, better find some friend and go to a bar! Unrelated scenes, hysterical girls, idiotic accidents... The guy who wrote the scenario must have been drunk. Without overstate - this is the worst thing I've ever seen! Half of the movie is how a few teens going on vacation, it should be in first ten to fifteen minutes, not more than half-hour. Not even one good scene, non violence, or sex, or fear even when they run and after them are killers who want to tear them apart. I could not feel anything of their emotions, I stayed like "When the interesting part will come?" The movie ended and it doesn't came. Now you go to thank toy Norman Reedus, because more of the raiting you have is because of him!

Red Canyon follows Devon and Regiina and their friends on their visit to an old family home. Unfortunately, a depraved incident happened years ago, which has consequences in the present day.Thankfully, unlike with say, that "Friday the 13th" remake, it actually feels like they're on vacation. For example, when the group is split up, someone asks whether they're going to return to the others before finding somewhere they can have lunch; which may be a little thing but it helps. Also, as they're arriving everyone seems tired of the others, something that often occurs during long road trips.Unfortunately that leaves less time for actual characterisation. Regina seems traumatised by the past events, Tom seems to be the obnoxious guy and Terra might be the slutty girl unless that scene's intention was to characterise another guy as lecherous. That's about it.Actually there isn't much splatter on screen but what's seen tends to be brutal. What drags the film down though is... without spoilers, I can only say there's a very long explanation of the past event which drags on for around ten minutes towards the finale. That's when I stopped caring, incidentally.The film shows some promise and while decent, ultimately it's nothing special.

Prior to Red Canyon, Wolf Creek taught us all that carefree road trips really can go wrong. Red Canyon takes that lesson, turns it on its ear, reminds you that the boogey man is more real than supernatural and then to reinforce the message hits you over the head and says "let sleeping dogs lie". The script, the cast and the overall production are much more professional than you expect in films of this nature. The camera work, the lighting and some of the angles that the director chose for shots gave things a fresh flow.The cast was all quite good, but both Justin Hartley and Christine Lakin took their material and made their characters quite compelling. I look forward to the day when someone realizes that Justin Hartley has the acting chops to play more than the affable good guy who screws up from time to time.