Directed by Dave Payne, 2005

I chose a Spanish DVD copy of Dave Payne’s long overdue Reeker as the first film of last week’s Friday the 13th horrorthon.  Due to technical difficulties there wasn’t much of a thon going on, but in retrospect it wasn’t a complete bust because Reeker was, perhaps, the most fun I’ve had with my group of friends and a straight-to-DVD movie since Dead & Breakfast.

A group of relative strangers on a communal trip to a rave in the desert get stuck at a employee-less motel, see the occasional ghost, and are progressively bumped off by a creature with the overpowering, literal stench of death. 

The familiarity of the setting and the characters should be acknowledged, but Dave Payne’s script and direction frequently sidesteps any oil slicks associated with such stock elements, never losing its footing and energetically throws in enough fresh details to keep your enjoyment at a maximum – whether the source is the effective gore or the charming sense of humor.

The majority of the characters could have been pulled randomly out of a hat, but Payne shows a select few variations on traits or casting choise are all it takes to keep things lively.  Namely making Jack (Devon Gummersall) blind and casting Michael Ironside as the one stranger they encounter along the way.  These two things alone makeup for the two frat boys, the slightly hippie chic and the foreign girl.  And I’ll even give Payne extra credit for progressively transforming the instantly annoying frat boy Trip into a character you actually want to see more of.

The horror starts off the way you’d expect – showing what the ‘Reeker’ is capable of by killing off unrelated characters in the film’s intro – and ends up where you’d expect, but along the way there are enough sick sight gags and genuine laughs to keep things interesting.  It even included a fumbled escape attempt that should elict a roar of laughter regardless if you’ve already written the movie off at that point or not.

Payne strikes an admirable balance with his killer as well.  It’s hard to take something that has an aura of digitally created stink lines seriously, especially when its weaponary consists of all kinds of goofy, scrap-yard power tools (including one that has a wild resemblance to part of the Flight of the Navigator), but he never wimps out on the makeup effects, which nicely subsidizes the films jovial aspects.  I actually didn’t mind the stink lines too much, but if slightly sub-par CGI is a raw nerve for you, you’ll probably discredit the whole thing.

The film’s biggest complainers will mock the "twist" ending, which isn’t wholly a twist (because the film certainly drops hints throughout its 90 minute running time).  It’s not an original ending either, but it is apropriate and I personally have no qualms with it.  It does soften the impact of everything you’ve seen if you try to convince yourself you truly cared about the characters, but I’ll never understand why people pretend like a lesser ending somehow negates any enjoyment had while leading up to it.

Oh, and the digital photography is some of the best I’ve seen for such indie fare, with many shots of the desert landscape and skyline achieving actual beauty.

Reeker is a fantastic group movie that you can really get into having fun while watching, cheering and jeering along with the film’s highs and lows.  It has more than its share of faults – such as the dividing ending and the introduction of minor plot points that don’t fully resurface later – but none are offensive enough to actually bring down the overall rush of the movie.