On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: STAKE LAND (IFC Films).

STAKE LAND On Demand

By Sky McCarthy

Those looking for a quant indie flick be warned – STAKE LAND is filled with as much gore as any high budget horror film. But, like many movies of a similar genre, consistently uses an onslaught of graphic blood-letting to distract from any real plotline. The post apocalyptic world created by director Jim Mickle is not realistic enough to inspire any real fear, nor does it reach that level of extreme absurdity to entertain for the entire hour and a half.

In a small American town where flesh eating zombie-vampires terrorize a shrinking human populace, a young boy named Martin (Connor Paolo, most recently of Gossip Girl fame) teams with a vampire hunting vigilante known only to the audience as “Mister.” The pairing and tone of the movie result in a feeling of THE ROAD meets ZOMBIELAND (without the laughs).

Indie horrors need not always suffer the same fate - read 28 DAYS LATER – but STAKE LAND has a difficult time deciding what it wants to be. For example, it is never made clear as to what caused this sudden break out of zombie hybrids and why they are so difficult to kill.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE MOTH DIARIES (IFC Films).

THE MOTH DIARIES

By Sky McCarthy

Since the explosive success of vampire culture brought on by the TWILIGHT phenomenon, you may think you’ve seen it all. Vampires seem to be everywhere today but THE MOTH DIARIES explores a new side of the teen horror genre that is more subtle and perhaps more powerful than gnashing fangs and battles with werewolves. Director Mary Harron (AMERICAN PSYCHO) takes viewers into the world of an exclusive all-girls boarding school where the dynamics of adolescent female friendship are pushed to the brink of destruction.

Rebecca (Sarah Bolger) is returning to Brangwyn College after losing her father to a tragic suicide. While her depression is not evident in every scene, Rebecca is deeply consumed by the incident. Her best friend is Lucy (Sarah Gadon), an ethereally beautiful and athletic companion who represents the girl everyone wants to be. While Lucy and Rebecca share an intimate closeness, it is clear that Rebecca has developed a dependence on Lucy to fill the void left in the wake of her fractured family life.

The girls share a close circle of friends who gossip about boys and occasionally party after “lights-out” in their dorms. But when a dark and somewhat cryptic new classmate, Ernessa (Lily Cole), enrolls at Brangwyn, mysterious events threaten to crack even the closest relationships. At first sight, Ernessa takes an intense and obsessive liking to Lucy and, as they become closer, Rebecca feels cast aside.

As her worst insecurities come out, Rebecca begins to suspect that Ernessa is behind the strange new occurrences but friends cast her suspicions aside as jealousy. With clever storytelling ability, Harron taps into the audiences’ potential doubts as well. We know Ernessa is creepy but, like Rebecca, we are never witness to any of her evil doing. It is later revealed that Ernessa also lost her father to a suicide and the similarities in their lives continue to haunt Rebecca’s dreams. The line between reality and imagination become increasingly blurred as Rebecca’s obsession with catching her new enemy magnifies.