The Lake on Clinton Road (2015)

You won't be disappointed!

Touches You

As Good As It Gets

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

RELEASED IN 2015 and written & directed by DeShon Hardy, "The Lake on Clinton Road" chronicles events at the titular lake in remote New Jersey when three college couples go to a vacation home to celebrate. Things go horrible awry when they discover that the rumors of the lake being haunted are real. The low ratings & reviews are inaccurate because this is a cogent cabin-in-the-woods flick. While it may be a low-budget indie with a no-name cast, the acting is convincing and the creepiness & scares are genuine. Moreover, the score is effective (with the soundtrack throwing in some rap sheet). The six youths travel to their isolated destination in typical celebration mode, but their frivolity palpably changes by the second half. People complain that they're an obnoxious bunch, but that's not true. They're just young adults out celebrating. So what? We've all done it. The two football guys (Richard Ryker & Anthony Grant) are great masculine role models, disregarding the customary cussing. They have good camaraderie, treat their women well, and don't abuse the chubby white guy, their amusing pal. Ryker is particularly a strong masculine protagonist. Speaking of the women, the director has a good eye for depicting feminine beauty without getting too tasteless. Leah Jones is mind-blowingly voluptuous while petite brunette Stephanie Marrone ain't no slouch; nor is the black girl for that matter (India Autry). The bottom line is: The movie works well for what it is. It contains all the requisite staples and works them expertly into an entertaining brew. I'd watch this any day over the cartoonish "The Evil Dead" (1981), the over-the-top comical "Evil Dead II" (1987), the trashy "Cabin Fever" (2002), the lame "Zombeavers" (2014) or the too-creative-for-its-own-good "Cabin in the Woods" (2012).There's a curiously overlong epilogue tacked-on after the end credits that's at least three times as long as it needed to be. I think the director just wanted to give some screen time to the two 12 year-old girls in the back seat, who are probably related to him. In any case, it shows a fresh group of giddy youths just before they're humbled big time; humbled or dead, whatever. THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour, 20 minutes and was shot in Marlton, New Jersey & Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. GRADE: B+

The term exploitation has been used to lump together softcore horror films, mainly from Europe during the 1960s and 1970s, although Hammer also became bitten by the bug in its latter years. Now, we feel we have progressed so smoothly that the term isn't used any more. And that's because such a titillating way of teasing the audience with choreographed sexuality has become the norm. Here, we have the dreaded 'group of friends', one celebrating a birthday, who go looking for a beach house and instead discover The Lake House. As one character, superficially hard-to-please Stacey (India Autry) says, "A beach house needs to have a beach." The reply, "Yeah, I got that memo." The friends here are the usual stylised, buff bodied, greased back, laconic, horny collection torpidly passed off as 'normal'. Teens of indiscriminate age whose idea of a really good put-down is to say accusingly "You let me work out on my own today." To break the perfect collective, there is a moderately over-weight guy who 'gets by' by constantly making apologetic weight jokes to justify his inclusion.The story: years ago, a young boy was drowned in the lake on Clinton Road and may be haunting the Lake House. As nothing in particular happens, these forever wholesomely tattooed 24-hour party people fill the running time by having cosmetic arguments, only to later reward each other with themselves. When one of their number – Jillian (Leah Jones) - threatens to tarnish the perfect party bubble by not feeling well, a lethargy sweeps across the ensemble. After a while, they no longer even have the energy to twerk (dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance).Away from the sporty birthday revellers, the location is, as is often the case, a blessed relief. Scenic, expansive and remote-looking enough to convince of sinister goings-on far away enough from society to be, in theory, moderately effective. You'd hope. Still, the mood slithers from high-spirited party action to posture and ponder-meant now things aren't quite excellent anymore. When one sleek bodied seductress disappears – you know, the one who wasn't feeling well – the reaction from the others is minimal. A manly hand-slap and they continue as before. Camaraderie for those left behind, whilst the birthday boy laments his suddenly imperfect celebrations."I ain't scared of s**t. That's white people's s**t. Coloured people don't do ghosts." Pure poetry.Without listing further non-eventful contrivances, 'Lake House' proves to be an excruciating and anaemic haunting effort with a little scary music interrupting the rap beats and lead-ups to sex scenes that don't happen. A little high-speed body-distortion (owing a lot to various exorcism films) and that's your lot as far as 'scares' are concerned. Suddenly, the inclusion of some uplifting music alerts us to the fact the film is ending. But wait! A post-credits sequence features desperately overlong web-cam footage of another car full (of what appear to be four twelve-year olds driving to Clinton Road, mocking the existence of any haunting. This scene seems to go on forever. For a lead-up to any threatened sequel, it spends its entire duration overstaying its welcome). It's difficult to know how an audience is supposed to react to this film, if at all, but who cares? Horrifying, for all the wrong reasons.

Okay, where to start with this movie. Well the story had potential, so there is that. I'm giving this a 1 because of the acting. I've seen a lot of bad movies because I'm a fan of B rated horror. The actors in this movie however are something else. It wasn't so much the bad acting, all though there is a lot of that. It was more the just incredibly terrible dialogue and the delivery of that dialogue. I don't even know how to describe it. The Jersey shore type talking and yelling is so annoying that you find yourself waiting for someone to show up and kill all the main characters, and you are looking forward to it. If the directors vision was to create a movie with an okay horror story, but make the audience hate every single character, mission accomplished.

The real horror is how plane is the movie, how bad actors feature, and a story that never really develops, or the lack of an introduction that makes sense to begin with. Is like watching an MTV episode of Jersey Shore, or the fist attempt to film form an old director of music videos....from a terrible band, that does n't cut as a one hot wonder. The characters never act like normal people wold do facing the loss of a friend, or a boyfriend. We never get to know exactly what happened to the kid. Weird how one by one they fall, but never really know what they experience. Just a succession of mornings and night with nothing to do but drink, have sex, and barely think if they should or should not do anything about that weirdly missing friend.