June Cabin (2007, dir:
Ross Otterman; script: Ross Otterman, Liz Federowicz, cast:
Sonia Segal, Alex James, Liz Federowicz, Alex Douglas, Darren
Robertson, Nicolas Pavlos, Nina Kaczorowski)
June
Cabin is marketed as a horror film. It has a ghostly poster.
Its back cover speaks of a young man lurking in the woods ... with
an AX!
But it's not a horror film. It's about seven young people who
spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods. They drink, smoke dope,
have sex with each other. They gossip about who's sleeping with
whom, or cheating on whom, etc.
This angers some of them. Will someone use that AX?
Because
June Cabin is marketed as horror, you expect someone to start
a killing spree. Hell, you even look forward to it. Instead, there
are only occasional insert shots of an angry young man chopping
with an ax -- but that's about it, until...
Finally, at 1 hour and 15 minutes into the film --
five minutes before the End Credits roll -- someone
kills someone.
I don't think the filmmaker intended a horror film. The "special
features" include trailers for three other films, all artsy indie
films.
I think the filmmaker intended
June Cabin to be a study of young people. But it doesn't work
on that level. These young people are supposed to be in their late
20s (one says he's 27). They claim to be a law student, tax
consultant, floor trader, etc., yet they behave like dumb teens in
a slasher film.
Some of them look like they could be slasher film teens, because
many slasher films cast twentysomething actors to play teens.
So you have dumb, teen-like people in the woods, drinking and
doping and sleeping around, and then at the end, someone gets
killed. I guess the distributor looked at it and said, Well,
it's too crappy to sell as an indie film. I guess we can trick
some DVD buyers into thinking this is a horror film.
But IT'S NOT!
This film is full of flashbacks, flash-forwards,
fantasy/dream-flashes, and conversations about things that
happened in the past, so one is thoroughly confused as to when this
or that scene is happening.
Some of the cinematography is nice, in an artsy-fartsy way. But
this is a pointless film. Doesn't work as horror, nor as suspense,
nor as indie art film.
The script is bland, the characters interchangeable in a "teen
slasher" sort of way. How do such mindless scripts
find financing? Who shells out money to produce such
crap?
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