The Acolytes: Underground Horror from Down Under

Part serial killer thriller, part good teens gone bad, Australian indie “Acolytes” is the kind of horror movie they should be making more of. I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to this genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Mark (Seb Gregory) wanders into the woods one day and spies a man burying something. He and his friends James (Josh Payne) and Chasely (Hannah Morgan Lawrence) decide to unearth the buried treasure, but instead of money, they discover the body of a young woman.

Here’s where the movie takes a turn for the “Kids do the darndest things when they find a body”, and I start wondering if I ever really want to procreate. Instead of reporting the body to the police, Mark and James cook up a scheme to find the murderer and blackmail him into killing an evil scumbag kiddie rapist (Michael Dorman) who has recently been released from prison. Schemes like this in thrillers never play out as planned, so things go from bad to worse pretty quickly for Mark, James, and Hannah.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jon Hewitt

Written by: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause

Starring: Sebastian Gregory, Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan Lawrence

Theatrical Release: 05/15/08

DVD Release: 07/28/09

Production Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

With a small budget of only four million dollars, “Acolytes” has a great visual style and excellent performances by the cast, especially considering their age. Unlike most teen horror flicks, the characters in “Acolytes” are handled as real people instead of hash marks on a killer’s bed post.

You’ve probably seen movies that have one twist too many. The theatrical release of this movie has four or five too many- so many twists piled on top of one another is overkill and takes away from the overall impact. The ending is a bit of a cliché for a thriller, which is the biggest let down of all. (The DVD features two alternate endings.)

Overall, “Acolytes” is a movie I would certainly recommend to fans of the horror/thriller genre. It’s dark and disturbing and has just the right kind of jump-out-of-your-seat tension. The DVD became available in the U.S. today.

5 Movies From the Underground, 6/11/09

Our objective at TV Casualties is actually pretty simple – it’s our duty to uncover the gems, what the British would call the “best bits.”  This becomes especially crucial when dealing with TV series or movies that have been overlooked.  The following movies will throttle you.  Hard.  (We actually suggest you sit as you watch them.)  And not one of them has more than 2000 votes on IMDB. So give these films the love they deserve – buy them, sign up for a free trial at Blockbuster and rent them, etc. Find a way.

1. “Shotgun Stories” (2008) 1,284 votes on IMDB – Michael Shannon earned an Oscar nom last year for his role in “Revolutionary Road.”  He also starred in the much lesser known “Shotgun Stories,” which was my favorite movie of 2008.  A blood feud erupts between two families in a rural Arkansas town, and it’s not long before both sides go too far.  The movie has funny parts but is dark and very subtle, with a needlessly tragic streak that doesn’t feel at all manipulative or contrived.  It’s the best I’ve watched in a long time.

2. “Chop Shop” (2008)  1,240 votes on IMDB – Ramin Bahrani wrote and directed “Chop Shop,” a movie about a street kid scavenging in the slums of New York.  Alejandro works in a chop shop and the owner lets him live in a cluttered room above it.  Eventually he takes in his sister, whom looks headed toward prostitution, and the two of them save up to try to buy an ice cream truck to start a food truck business.  The story somehow balances the naivete of a child with the grit and grim of urban life in an honest, believable way.  Roger Ebert declared Bahrani the “new great American director” a few months ago.

3. “Diggers” (2007) 1,090 votes on IMDB – Written by our Emmy pick for Outstanding Performance in a Comeday, Ken Marino, “Diggers” tells the story of clam diggers in a depressed New England town in the 70′s. Hunt (Paul Rudd) deals with the loss of his father while a corporation threatens to put him, and all other local diggers, out of business. Rudd plays the reserved main character well, but Marino steals the laughs as a frantic father of many. While subtle, this is probably the funniest movie on the list. You can own it for under $10.

4. “Look Both Ways” (2005) 1,865 votes on IMDB – “Look Both Ways” is the first full length feature from writer/director/animator Sarah Watt. Set in New Zealand, the movie follows Meryl, an artist who illustrates sympathy cards for a living, and whose father recently died. After witnessing a deadly train crash, Meryl meets Nick, a photojournalist who is sent to cover the crash and has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Sounds uplifting, no? It actually works out to be subtly optomistic by the end, I promise. Animated scenes of Meryl’s obsessively morbid thoughts mix with the live action, which is where the movie really shines.

5. “Ten Tiny Love Stories” (2001) 232 votes on IMDB – If I were a teacher, Rodrigo García would be teacher’s pet. On top of having written and directed three movies we like a lot (“Nine Lives” and “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her” are the other two), he’s directed a number of the best episodes of our favorite shows (“Carnivale” and “Six Feet Under“). That led to him landing his own HBO series, “In Treatment,” which is also excellent.  As a cherry on top of all of that, he’s also the spawn of author Gabriel García Márquez (another personal fave). “Ten Tiny Love Stories” is ten women sharing one intimate story from their past in almost-mockumentary fashion. Some of the stories are sad, some are funny, and almost all of them are so well crafted that you’ll feel a slight voyeuristic discomfort, as if you’ve come across someone’s secret video diary and can’t help but keep watching.