SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 104: Southbound

[europe1]

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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC.

Week 104 -- in which we welcome the first anthology film to the SMC! Like most anthology films that are made, it's a horror picture.

Our Directors... or at least three of them since I can't find photos of the one who works under the pseudonym "Radio Silence".​

David Bruckner

Roxanne Benjamin

Patrick Horvath

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Film Overview


Premise: Five interlocking tales of terror follow the fates of a group of weary travellers who confront their worst nightmares - and darkest secrets - over one long night on a desolate stretch of desert highway.



Budget: ?
Box Office: $23.665

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Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)

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* The hospital scenes in "The Accident" were filmed in a non-functional wing of a working hospital.


* The van that breaks down in the "Siren" segment actually broke down on-set during production.


* For the entire final sequence of "Siren," all of the footage is flipped.


* The movie "Carnival of Souls" can be seen playing early on at the start of the movie in Roy's roadside cafe.
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Members: @shadow_priest_x @europe1 @MusterX @Scott Parker 27 @the muntjac @Cubo de Sangre @sickc0d3r @chickenluver @FrontNakedChoke @AndersonsFoot @Tufts

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Ain't this week #104?

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

* For the entire final sequence of "Siren," all of the footage is flipped.

What's this mean?

 

[europe1]

Ain't this week #104?

You have no physical proof what-so-ever that the title didn't always say so week 104. If you continue this line of questioning then you will be hearing from my lawyers. I am offended that you would ever insinuate that it at one point said 103.

What's this mean?

I can't find any pictures online to explain it -- but the image is flipped from left-to-right.

So, for example, if this picture was flipped, then Arnold's face would be on the right side instead of the left. Even though it was filmed while being on the left side.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

As a scary movie, this crushed The Ritual. Far more entertaining, compelling, interesting, creepy. It gave me a sort of Purgatory feel with everyone being one step from Hell. The floating creatures were bad ass. The surgery scene was uncomfortable fun.

The tie-ins between vignettes were cool, but I don't remember the shotgun dude relating to any of the other stories.

 

[europe1]

I think the dominant trend for the entire film is incompleteness. Every story we're introduced to has some veiled background that we are not privy too.

What are the two men running from and why are they wounded? What happened to Alex and why are these hermits so weird? Why is the town so empty? What's with the demon town? etc, etc.

I guess your level of comittment to the overall film is dictated on how intriguing you find these mysteries to be -- and how curious you are at this worldbuilding. Personally, I thought it was all pretty meh. Overall it feels like a bunch of vauge concepts and half-hearted implementations without much work or creativity put into the aesthetic.



The first story reminded me of a Max Payne dream-sequence. You have the area repeating itself as you go away from it, moving in cycles. You have the protagonist trapped in a apartment-like labyrinte haunted by childlike lamentations. Since it made me think about Max Payne so much I started firing my fingers in the air while going "pow-pow, pow-pow!" so to keep myself entertained, fantasising about flying across the room in slow-motion as I did so. Man Max Payne was an fantastic video game.

(pictured: my life circa 2001)


The second feels like the most classical set-up. Nubile teenager girls in peril! (featuring loose sexual morals as always). So apparently the family are a bunch of imortals and Alex comes back to haunt the main girl... ok? Honestly I would have prefeered for them to bump into Torgo and The Master. Could you imagine Torgo trying to hit on one of these girls? All while the rest of them have a 30 minutes catfight with the Masters wives? It would have made for a glorious horrorshow, I tell ya. But as it was it all felt rather pointless.

The third film was way to unclear to be good. I think not offering an explenation beyond "one of the demon girls wanted to have some fun" was pretty uninspired. That leg break was pretty funny though. Dude hits a girl with a car. Some mischievous voices instruct him on how to save her which in fact kills her. He drives away with no retributions... ok?



The fourth probably had the most evocative moment when the protagonist gets pulled out of the car and the headlights briefly show flickers of the ghastly creatures assaulting him. Otherwise... man wants to rescue sisters. Sister doesn't want to get rescued. Why? Dunno. Monster-life good I suppose.


Then the last segment... yeah some adoption crime that ends in a demon summoing. Ok.


Overall, its a pretty subpar film. One of the weakest we've had in the club. I guess Chickenluver was right after all. None of these segments leave an impression at all on me. The just arn't very evocative. The Ritual had masterful tension and atmosphere along with some really striking monster design. In this movie, everything just failed to leave an impression, they weren't evocative, they didn't enslave the eye. It all felt rather pointless, really. Except for the scene in the fourth segment -- nothing was even creepy or ghastly. The skeleton-demons looked completely stock and uninspired. And the constant, "here is a mystery", mystery didn't end up being very impactful, stick just feel really flat really quickly

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Some mischievous voices instruct him on how to save her which in fact kills her. He drives away with no retributions... ok?

They said he didn't deserve to be there so they let him go. Others that tried to leave died. Some stayed and accepted their fate. Not sure what the two girls who ate the burnt dinner did to be there.

 

[MusterX]

The real star of this show was Danny. He was man enough to find his sister, then kidnap the werewolf bartender or whatever he was, and when his sister said she didn't want to leave and when the bartender monster laughed at him, Danny did what any real man would do. He mockingly laughed back and he blew him away then he dragged his sister out of there. What Danny didn't know though was that you stay off the moors. They told Danny not to drive off the road but he just had to do it.

I liked this movie. It didn't inspire fear in me but I do enjoy a macabre tale. I liked the decision to make one stories characters intersect with the next stories characters as one ended and the other began. I liked how all the stories revolved around an unnamed highway, headed Southbound. I liked how the two guys in the first story were pursued by a pack of Grim Reapers but we never know what they did that was so bad until the end of the movie when we see them take out that family but we still don't know why they did it. In fact, its was the theme of the film.

We never really know exactly what is going on in any of the stories. What kind of cult abducted the three girls in the van with the flat tire? What were the monsters that did away with Danny when he tried to save his sister? We just don't know and I think that is part of what makes Southbound enjoyable. It had a Twilight Zone feel to it and much in the same way the film Triangle looped back on itself, Southbound also manages to make the beginning the end and the end the beginning.

I almost felt like we should have had an appearance from the Crypt Keeper.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I liked the decision to make one stories characters intersect with the next stories characters as one ended and the other began.

How did Danny's story intersect on each end? And yeah, he had balls as big as church bells.

At some point in the film I told the wife this was like a horror version of Slacker.

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

I saw this when it first came out

I was on an anthology vibe since I had saw VHS shorty before

I think it’s fine. None of the segments really stood out for me though compared to VHS

 

[MusterX]

I saw this when it first came out

I was on an anthology vibe since I had saw VHS shorty before

I think it’s fine. None of the segments really stood out for me though compared to VHS

V/H/S was excellent. Did you see V/H/S/2? I haven't seen it, just wondering if its any good.

 

[MusterX]

How did Danny's story intersect on each end? And yeah, he had balls as big as church bells.

At some point in the film I told the wife this was like a horror version of Slacker.

Danny's sister takes his car and drives back to the Motel, when she arrives, the daughter of the couple that get murdered is looking at her as she is going in the secret entrance and says, "What are you lookin at?"

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Danny's sister takes his car and drives back to the Motel, when she arrives, the daughter of the couple that get murdered is looking at her as she is going in the secret entrance and says, "What are you lookin at?"

Thanks!! And on the front end, after the one dude gets a new car and splits town? Was there a link or overlap to Danny's story?

I can't remember any segue between the opening two guys and the van girls either.

 

[MusterX]

Thanks!! And on the front end, after the one dude gets a new car and splits town? Was there a link or overlap to Danny's story?

I can't remember any segue between the opening two guys and the van girls either.

OMG, you bastard. You are making me go back and assure myself I saw these overlaps correctly.

When the first two guys story ends, one of them is trapped in a motel room and can't find his way out so they show the maid roll a cart by and put a do not disturb sign on the door. Next door to that room the door opens and the 3 girls appear and complain of their hangovers.

When the guy who hits the girl in his car is finally driving away he tells emergency response on the phone that he is hanging up and the shot pans to a girl on a payphone who says, "That's good Lucas, good night." She then hangs up the phone and walks into the bar, but doesn't latch the door. Then Danny walks in and starts shit.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

OMG, you bastard. You are making me go back and assure myself I saw these overlaps correctly.

When the first two guys story ends, one of them is trapped in a motel room and can't find his way out so they show the maid roll a cart by and put a do not disturb sign on the door. Next door to that room the door opens and the 3 girls appear and complain of their hangovers.

When the guy who hits the girl in his car is finally driving away he tells emergency response on the phone that he is hanging up and the shot pans to a girl on a payphone who says, "That's good Lucas, good night." She then hangs up the phone and walks into the bar, but doesn't latch the door. Then Danny walks in and starts shit.

Thanks dude. You're always so helpful with these details.

 

[MusterX]

Thanks dude. You're always so helpful with these details.

The interesting thing about it, at least to me, is the way the film was structured. The two guys in the first story, reappear in the last story and the film loops on itself, happening over and over. The big hint that its a macabre time loop is when the two guys at the beginning drive by the diner over and over. This is the same sort of thing that happened in another film the SMC watched called Triangle, which btw is an excellent movie if you haven't seen it.

 

[the muntjac]

I couldn't really get into this one. I feel the movie's main setback is one of the things it was striving for, which was to be mysterious by leaving us in the dark about a lot of details. A little mystery is fine, but there's too many blanks to be filled in here.

I'd say my favorite segment was the driver trying to save the girl's life. There were some good effects during the "surgery" sequence.

All in all, this was pretty ho-hum for me.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

The interesting thing about it, at least to me, is the way the film was structured. The two guys in the first story, reappear in the last story and the film loops on itself, happening over and over. The big hint that its a macabre time loop is when the two guys at the beginning drive by the diner over and over. This is the same sort of thing that happened in another film the SMC watched called Triangle, which btw is an excellent movie if you haven't seen it.

Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I dug the looping. Fits in with my Purgatory speculation. Repeating something until you prove somehow worthy of redemption or unworthy. Heck, it's called Southbound and has a pentagram highway for artwork. So it's either Hell or one step from it. With that in mind, it also makes the missing details superfluous.

 

[MusterX]

I couldn't really get into this one. I feel the movie's main setback is one of the things it was striving for, which was to be mysterious by leaving us in the dark about a lot of details. A little mystery is fine, but there's too many blanks to be filled in here.

I'd say my favorite segment was the driver trying to save the girl's life. There were some good effects during the "surgery" sequence.

All in all, this was pretty ho-hum for me.

I'm a little surprised you and @europe1 were ho-hum and meh for this film. I actually enjoyed watching it and I felt the 90 minute run time was just right. Then again, as I've said before, I'm a big fan of the horror genre. In terms of the "surgery sequence", I've been thinking about that. How do we know they didn't let him go because he actually tried to do the right thing? Instead of fleeing the scene and leaving her for dead he tried to save her, and maybe himself in the process.

 

[MusterX]

Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I dug the looping. Fits in with my Purgatory speculation. Repeating something until you prove somehow worthy of redemption or unworthy. Heck, it's called Southbound and has a pentagram highway for artwork. So it's either Hell or one step from it. With that in mind, it also makes the missing details superfluous.

I'm glad they called it "an unnamed highway" and when they show the sign for the highway number the number is smudged out. That put the number 666 in my mind, or at the least route 66, but there was definitely that thought of 6's. If they had actually made the highway 666 then it would have been too cheesy but they succedded in placing that idea in my mind anyhow.