Rites of Spring
- Fundamentals, reception.
- American live action feature length film, 2011, NR, 80 minutes, horror.
- IMDB: 4.6/10.0 from 839 users.
- Rotten Tomatoes: 17% on the meter, 14% from 218 audience ratings.
- Netflix: 2.9/5.0 from 63,020 users.
- Written and directed by: Padraig Reynolds.
- Starring: AJ Bowen as Ben Geringer, Andrew Breland as Tommy Geringer, Anessa Ramsay as Rachel Adam, Sonny Marinelli as Paul Nolan, Katherine Randolph as Amy, James Bartz as Ryan Hayden, Shannah Forrestall as Gillian Hayden, Andrew Breland as Tommy Geringer, Hannah Bryan as Alyssa Miller, Sarah Pachelli as Jessica, Skylar Burke as Kelly, Marco St John as The Stranger.
- Setup and Plot
- Opening inter-titles: high school senior young women go missing, year after year, since 1984. The film has already jumped the shark. That sort of thing would have been stopped in well under 30 years.
- Alyssa and Rachel leave a bar late at night. Rachel is conflicted about having made a mistake at work. Alyssa tells her to let someone else take the fall for it. Their car starts, eventually, but they immediately get a flat. Then they get abducted, taken to a barn, and strung up by their wrists by The Stranger. The Stranger does whatever the monster in the cellar needs.
- In a parallel thread, Ben and Paul kidnap Kelly, the daughter of Ryan, the principal employer in the area, and Jessica, Kelly's nanny. They demand 2 million USD in 2 hours. The kidnapping rolls forward on schedule, more or less. Tommy picks up the money, but he also picks up Kelly's father Ryan.
- Rachel gets free, then tries to help Alyssa, who is already dead by decapitation. Rachel escapes and runs; she goes to the place where the kidnappers are. The two plot threads come together.
- Ryan has Jessica freed, but Jessica is in league with Paul. Jessica shoots Ryan, and Paul informs the rest of them that he and Jessica are taking the 2 million. Then he kills Tommy. Ben and Amy are left defenseless against these two.
- Meanwhile, Rachel and the monstrous killer are racing toward the kidnappers. No one listens to her, of course. The monster decapitates Jessica. In the middle of all this, young Kelly breaks free and escapes.
- Ben has an opportunity to end all this by killing Paul, but of course he does not have the courage. Paul takes Rachel hostage and leaves. Rachel keeps insisting they have to clear out. The monster kills Paul, and takes another head.
- Ben, Amy, Rachel, and the monster are left. Ben and Amy go looking for a telephone, only to find the house of The Stranger. Amy's probably out of luck, but when The Stranger starts to carve up Ben, Rachel hammers The Stranger. The find Amy strung up on a cross, but the monster kills her. Ben throws Rachel his keys, then the monster does in Ben. Amy finds the car, travels down the road a bit, seems to find some help, but the one who could have aided her turns out the lights.
- Conclusions
- One sentence summary: Kidnappers meet monster meets spring rituals.
- One star of five. Two black holes for cinematography and screenplay.
- Scores
- Cinematography: 0/10 Camera shake. Intervals when all the frames are way out of focus. I liked the 2.35 aspect ratio, which sometimes means that excellent cinematography is on the way. Not here, not at all. More camera shake. Amateurish framing mistakes, inside-outside light level mistakes, ridiculous fades to totally out of focus blurs on the entire screen.
- Sound: 7/10 Best part of the film.
- Acting: 4/10 OK, given the script.
- Screenplay: 0/10 Corn plants that are 7 or 8 feet tall, with full ears, on March 21? Perhaps not. New abductions every year for close to thirty years with no solution? I don't think so. The monster had minutes of opportunity to do in Rachel. He usually killed his victims in one strike. What was the weird nest in the cellar? Not answered. Was this a crime movie? Not a very good one. Was it a horror movie? Not a convincing one or a scary one.
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