John’s Shamefully Bad Horror Corner: Bread Crumbs (2011)

MY CALL:  I actually feel stupid for watching this.  Be smarter than me…don’t! [F]  WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD:  If you wanna’ see people getting picked off with clever kills and some funny set-ups and lines then you shouldn’t turn too far from mainstream.  I’d aim for Sorority Row, the Scream series (Scream 4), Tucker and Dale vs Evil or Final Destination 5.  Or just drop the need for cheap laughs and go for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, The Hills Have Eyes series and Wrong Turn (but part one only).

All right, full disclosure: I knew nothing about this flick before watching suffering through it.  No preview, no good plot summary, just a random suggestion by Netflix for a lover of “Violent Slasher Movies.”  The opening credits were thoughtfully and artistically executed in a Hansel and Gretel fairy tale storybook style.  This is nice.  It shows us that the filmmakers actually cared about this movie.  The film quality smacks of mediocrity, which I’m willing to let slide for a bit, and the acting and dialogue are painfully subpar as I suppose you’d expect from a tolerable-quality straight-to-DVD slasher.  But this was less than tolerable.

This flick follows a van of 20- or 30-somethings to an over-sized backwoods cabin for an adult film shoot.  [Way to force the gratuitous nudity.]  But hold on.  Strippers vs Zombies pulled the same ploy, and that was funny!  Sad how the present filmmakers failed to likewise capitalize.  The crew includes a douche bag, a nerdy geek, an insecure chick, a catty bitch, a nice guy, a high strung chick…you know, a lot of personality types nuanced by minimal acting talent and some very, very poor attempts at humor.  It’s all pretty tacky.

The odd placement of stuffed animals, some random singing in the forest by a redneck orphan, and a teen-hillbilly peeping-Tom serve as poorly-placed harbingers of the weird and murderous things to come.  The hillbilly kids are meant to be off-putting—they’re not.  The singing in the forest is meant to be spooky and unnerving—it’s not.  The adult film angle allows for some very funny, creative, unique deaths—notta’ one!

The kills, the only reason anyone ever watches movies like this, were piss poor.  A few arrows shot from the dark, a lame ankle snare, a pitfall trap; all tired ideas executed with zero innovation.  After the clever opening credits, it seems that everything that could have possibly gone wrong, did.  The two children are the villains in this filmmaking tragedy.  Evil kids, possessed kids, brainwashed kids, they’re always super creepy…but not here.  Not even a bit.  They don’t look deformed, oddly short or pale or mature or fanatical, or dirty.  They possess none of the keystone traits of malevolent backwoods kids.  The writer tried to go for a clever play on Hansel and Gretel—EPIC FAIL!  So much potential, so wasted.

I actually feel stupid for watching this.  Please be smarter than me and avoid it!

John: OUT!