Lucky McKee is a director who’s been on the radar of horror fans for about fifteen years, since he broke onto the scene with MAY. His second one THE WOODS was only okay from what I remember, but I liked his Jack Ketchum adaptation RED. He probly doesn’t share my affection for it – he was fired for publicly unexplained reasons and a different director finished it – but his Ketchum assocation continued when he produced the adaptation THE LOST and actually co-wrote THE WOMAN with the author, based on one of his OFFSPRING characters. I think THE WOMAN is McKee’s best and most interesting by far, but in the ensuing six years he’s only done a couple silly things (ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE and a segment of TALES OF HALLOWEEN) and I haven’t heard much about him.
Now all the sudden here comes a generically titled thriller for the VOD/DTV market and if you bother to check the credits then sure enough, there’s Lucky McKee. I assume it was never intended for wide theatrical release, because John Cusack (THE CONTRACT, WAR INC., THE FACTORY, THE NUMBERS STATION, THE FROZEN GROUND, THE BAG MAN, DRIVE HARD, THE PRINCE, RECLAIM, CELL, ARSENAL) plays the villain. It ‘s possible that it was a for-hire gig for McKee, since he’s written most of his previous movies, while this one is credited to Jared Butler and Lars Norberg. Both seem to be debuting as writers, but Butler voices the Johnny Depp characters (Jack Sparrow, Mad Hatter, Tonto) in a bunch of Disney video games! As far as I could tell he didn’t bring any of that knowledge to this story.
It concerns three college age kids who grew up together, now reunited for a camping trip, and they find some bags of money. And of course Cusack is the dangerous guy the loot belongs to, who tries to get it back from them. It’s a premise we’ve seen many times, but that’s because it works. (read the rest of this shit…)
