OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS Not even deserving a same-breath mention with Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark, which it desperately tries to evoke, this British-made horror film starts out suggestive and unsettling but quickly goes haywire. Director Marcus Adams (Long Time Dead) does a good job of establishing the eerie, lonely atmosphere of late-night motorways and service-stations?which is where we meet single mum Madeleine Stowe and pissed-off daughter Mischa Barton. They make the mistake of picking up hitchhiker Bijou Phillips (face it, you're better off picking up a guy with a hook for a hand than Bijou Phillips), which leads to Barton being kidnapped by a camper van-driving vampire cult and Stowe setting off in hot pursuit. Adams, however, falls asleep at the wheel and collides with an entirely different film, one in which Jonathan Rhys-Meyers hosts a sexy dance party in a lorry, an enigmatic character called the Recovery Man (Norman Reedus) does stuff that makes no sense, and Stowe blows things up in a laboratory. Very silly and not a bit scary?see the first half-hour perhaps, but then imagine the rest for yourself.
OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS
Not even deserving a same-breath mention with Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, which it desperately tries to evoke, this British-made horror film starts out suggestive and unsettling but quickly goes haywire. Director Marcus Adams (Long Time Dead) does a good job of establishing the eerie, lonely atmosphere of late-night motorways and service-stations?which is where we meet single mum Madeleine Stowe and pissed-off daughter Mischa Barton. They make the mistake of picking up hitchhiker Bijou Phillips (face it, you’re better off picking up a guy with a hook for a hand than Bijou Phillips), which leads to Barton being kidnapped by a camper van-driving vampire cult and Stowe setting off in hot pursuit. Adams, however, falls asleep at the wheel and collides with an entirely different film, one in which Jonathan Rhys-Meyers hosts a sexy dance party in a lorry, an enigmatic character called the Recovery Man (Norman Reedus) does stuff that makes no sense, and Stowe blows things up in a laboratory. Very silly and not a bit scary?see the first half-hour perhaps, but then imagine the rest for yourself.
