EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK
The Curse of Buckout Road hindered by a few too many horror movie clichés
In the real world, Westchester County, N.Y., is home to about a million people. In this movie, it’s “home to every kind of urban legend imaginable,” although I think it’s overselling that point; at no time during The Curse of Buckout Road did I notice any sewer-alligators, pet Chihuahuas that were really rats, or those gangs that kill you if you flash your high beams at them.
Also not sure why this film, which premièred as Buckout Road at the Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival in 2017 and won best feature and best screenplay, felt the need to lengthen its name. Cinema is already full of “The Curse of ...” titles, including The Jade Scorpion, The Black Pearl, La Llorona, even The Were-Rabbit.
Regardless, this first feature from North Bay, Ont., actor-turned-writer-director Matthew Currie Holmes is a decent if overly busy scarefest. It opens with a university teacher committing suicide, and her traumatized student Cleo (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) seeking psychiatric help from Dr. Powell (Danny Glover), whose grandson Aaron (Evan Ross) has just returned home.
Now, Dr. Powell happens to be a good friend of Det. Roy Harris (Henry Czerny), who is also Cleo’s dad, and who disapproves of her spending time with Aaron, whom she meets after her appointment with the doctor. Add to that the fact that Harris and Powell appear to be the only cop and shrink in the county, and you have the curse of a screenplay using coincidence as a crutch.
The film also casts a wide net of frights — there’s a scary lady in white, a 40-year-old legend about carnivore albino twins (shot in a grainy ’70s style), centuries-old witch burnings, and a slightly more recent murder by a slave-owner, not to mention the old standbys like creaky doors and faces that appear in bathroom mirrors.
Cleo and Aaron join forces to identify and thwart whatever devilry is infesting their town, leading to such humdinger lines as: “The evil won’t stop until you’re all dead — but I think I know a way to stop it.” Although my favourite dialogue is tossed off by a local priest played by Colm Feore: “Everyone here knows about Buckout Road.”
If this sounds like I’m having fun at the movie’s expense — well, I am.
But that might actually be the most enjoyable manner of approaching its villain-in-plainsight ethos and its screwball finale. Sometimes the best way to meet a road-based curse is head-on. cknight@postmedia.com