Continuing with our special New Orleans Horror Film Fest edition of reviews here at 30 Days of Plight, I bring to you an 80's throwback film entitled The Barn.
Every town has their ghost stories. Where I grew up we had one about "Becky's Grave," which was a grave set back on some farm property. As I got older there were other ones I found out about as you moved further out. There's the underwater ex-town of Livermore, PA, or the child's grave in the basement of the Lawrenceville Library in Pittsburgh, PA. In case you can't tell from that I lived in Western PA a long time. Why do I bring any of this up in a review about a film?
The Barn focuses on one of these handed down ghost tales. The story is that if you knock on a specific barn three times and say trick-or-treat then three spirits from hell come to kill you. The first being the Boogyman, who dresses like a miner because he helped the devil create a tunnel from hell and some miners came across it. I'll actually buy that story for this film. The second being Pumpkin Jack who reminds me a lot of Samhain from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. He apparently works as the lookout for the trio because he can enter any pumpkin or jack-o-lantern to watch or take form. The final is the Candy Corn Scarecrow, who feels like the most random of the bunch as he has candy corn teeth and bites the fuck out of people. I forget what his role is specifically. Our group of teens just so happen to be heading to a concert and come across the barn without knowing that it is the barn. Shit, of course, goes down, and following the rules of Halloween may be the only way to survive.
This film had some great cameos in it, such as The Legendary Hucklebucks playing the Halloween Hootenanny and Ari Lehman of Friday the 13th fame plays the TV/radio personality Dr. Rock. I also feel like there are some references to other horror classics. The combination of the skull mask, the witch mask, and Pumpkin Jack made me think of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. There's also an Evil Dead moment with some vines, and a more modern bit with a vibe of Tucker & Dale VS. Evil. The only issue I had with this film at all was despite the relatively normal length, it felt like it was dragging a bit in the middle. I thought this film was closer to two hours until I looked up the time.
If you want to check out more info on The Barn then visit their Facebook at facebook.com/TheBarnmovie/
Also if you want to check out the New Orleans Horror Film Fest you can do so at nolahorrorfilmfest.com/
Overall I give The Barn 4 copies of the Replacements album Hootenanny out of 5:
No comments:
Post a Comment