Drifter (2016) 1h 26m

There's nothing worse than buckling in for what you think is going to be a wild ride only to have things just jump the tracks.  I sat down, started this up, had some orange juice with me, a cat on my lap, hit play, things started off great.  Then...well... let's get into it.

Drifter follows two brothers as they're attempting to track down the man that killed their father.  They're driving across the desert in hopes that they're on the trail of the murderer.  After a few tough run-ins one of the brothers needs medical attention and they stop at the first town-ish/trailer park thing they come across.  From there everything goes south.

This film has one of my greatest complaints which is unnecessary or unfinished plot points.  You can leave a plot point open ended if done well, but the first quarter to half of this film is focused on the brothers getting revenge.  About 10 minutes into them being in this town that plot line is completely abandoned.  I'm also not sure what the setting for this world is.  Everytime someone comes across them they ask how they have a working car.  Yet the person they're chasing is supposed to be in a car.  So is it just that in this desert region of nothing cars became scarce or is this some form of post apocalyptic world?  Finally, I assume that the one writer/director are a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1000 Corpses because once the town "family" gets introduced then it's the crazy eccentric cannibals!  It's like you took the Firefly family from ...1000 Corpses and told them to be poorer quality versions of themselves.

The high points of this film are everything up to them arriving in the town and the score.  The score is simple but coated in a sense of pending danger.  It's louder than some scores but it doesn't overpower the scene.  The viewer has an auditory dread of "what's coming" while watching.

As I mentioned earlier, I wish that plot line A (revenge) would have tied into plot line B (the town) better.  Once B is wrapped up we're just left wandering that same wasteland of a desert without a decent sense of accomplishment for the characters or even just us.  It tries to make that jump that ...1000 Corpses does but it's not absurd enough.  They don't have the horror experience that Rob Zombie had at that time, and in the end, it set Drifter into a ditch to die.

I give Drifter 1.5 car pancakes out of 5:

Raw (a.k.a. Grave) (2016) 1h 39m

If this movie has taught me anything then it would be the following information about France (or possibly a French speaking area like Quebec): 1) You apparently either become an aggressively homosexual truck driver or go to vet school, 2) Vet school in France is the fucking worst, 3) French woman (especially those from vegetarian families) have the possibility of becoming cannibals.  I think I just accidentally summed this movie up too early.

Raw is the story of a girl going away to vet school (which her older sister is also attending) and going through some serious life changes.  For instance, she starts off being vegetarian and then, after a hazing ritual has her eat a raw rabbit liver, she begins to crave meat.  Normal meat isn't enough though and, after eating her sister's severed finger, she finds she craves human flesh.  None of this is as cool as you may think it sounds.

This movie is less of a horror film and more of a slow drama with cannibal elements.  It takes a while to get anywhere and when it does the party sucks and you would much rather be back home playing video games.  I like the concept of this film.  They take it from a very "outside the box" perspective when it comes to having those jagged horror edges.  Yet I found myself checking the time left on the film because I really just didn't care about our leading lady's transition from virgin vegetarian girl to deflowered cannibal woman.  Dammit!  I made this movie sound cool again.  It's not.  At least not to my American horror senses.

I give Raw 1 severed finger first aid image out of 5: