Blood’s Thicker Than Water, And Ours Is Thicker Than Most, Because We’ve Kept It Pure
Main Cast: Kelsey Crane, Kelsey Wedeen
Director: George Bessudo
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Of all the horror movies I’ve ever watched in my life, I don’t know if there’s ever been a time I went into one with less anticipation than I did going into LAKE DEAD. Three sisters inherit a lakeside motel and, upon investigating their new property, run afoul of murdering hillbillies. Hmm. That sounds . . . exciting . . . I guess? And it doesn’t sound a thing like a good 30% of the horror movies I’ve seen in my life. Sigh. But, well, I can’t very well review the series if I skip it, can I?
So Brielle (Kelsey Crane), Kelly (Kelsey Wedeen), and Samantha Lake (Tara Gerard) find out a grandfather they never knew about has died and left them his motel. Samantha doesn’t attend the funeral, so she heads up the night before. The next day Brielle and Kelly go up, with Brielle’s boyfriend Ben (Jim Devoti), Ben’s friend Bill (Alex A. Quinn), Bill’s girlfriend Amy (Vanessa Viola), and Kelly’s friend Tanya (Malea Richardson).
They get there, but there’s no sign of Samantha. The kindly old manager, Gloria (Pat McNeely), says she hasn’t seen anyone in months. The friends decide to set up camp near the lake in Bill’s RV instead of staying in the motel and when Bill and Tanya go off to get firewood, they don’t make it back. Suffice it to say, there’s a whole lot more Lake family members in this movie than the plot would have you believe, and this family tree does not fork.
LAKE DEAD is not a good movie. And it’s not just because the plot is awful and predictable, although first-time writer Daniel P. Coughlin didn’t have to make his inexperience so obvious–then again, neither did first-time director George Bessudo (both would go on to work together on FARMHOUSE with Steven Weber, which is a better movie, but still pretty predictable, I felt), but I’m not saying LAKE DEAD is the worst horror movie, just not at all original.
The clichés abound, from the drug use to the sex to the inbred killers to the kindly old matron who’s really the most evil of the bunch. Other than one death which kicked much ass, none of the deaths were interesting and the effects were only passable if you didn’t stare too long.
The acting was so bad, but I do want to lay part of that blame on the script. It can’t be easy to give a winning performance when the words are so incredibly awful. But that doesn’t absolve the actors entirely. They were NOT good, the Lake sisters especially.
I watched LAKE DEAD, keeping an eye out for anything I could take away that might, in the end, make the movie worth recommending, but aside from that one death, there’s just nothing here. LAKE DEAD is entirely void of any hint of creativity, originality, or even talent. This is a movie anyone could have made, and probably just as well.
On the bright side, I guess I can commend the production team. The look of the movie was good, very believable as far as the sets were concerned. It’s just the rest of it that stank. Too bad. Another draft of the script would have helped tremendously, as would a major overhaul of the plot. But in the end, it still would have been just another slasher flick about inbred hillbillies, and, really, do we need more of that? After all, WRONG TURN pretty much outdid any inbred hillbilly movies that follows in 2003. LAKE DEAD would have had to be pretty spectacular to outshine that one and at this early stage, Coughlin just didn’t have it in him yet. This film definitely shows he’s trying, he’s just not there. Maybe one day.
Until then, I won’t tell you to stay far away from LAKE DEAD, I’m just telling you it’s not good and I wouldn’t watch it again, at all.
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C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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