Pelt (2011)

"Sudden, gory death hides behind every bush. When beautiful Jennifer and her friends embark on a backpacking excursion deep into the woods, they come chest to chest with an evil as old as the trees. Listen...above the crackling of the campfire...is that the sound of a twig snapping or your best girlfriend's neck? The interlopers discover that when the locals warn you not to trespass, it's a warning you should heed."

*For the record, no locals really warned anyone about anything.

At 5:29 in, when one of the already annoying characters announces "I'm addicted to piss videos", any and all hope of this movie not sucking on a large scale went right out the window. And let's just forget that absolutely nothing horror related even comes close to happening until around the 28:00 mark (of a less than 80 minute movie), because when the "action finally begins, it's so bad that it inspires sadness rather than any sort of fear, dread or tension.

Here's what must have happened: The director of this movie must have been stoned one day, and thought, "Hey, I can make a horror movie that's witty and awesome!" Randomly, jsut liek that. So he went and pawned his Playstation 3, found a group of people that couldn't act to save their lives (save for maybe one or two), took 20 minutes to write what may be one of the lamest scripts filled with some of the worst dialogue of all time, and said, "Action!"

"Hey dogfucker, I bet you wish you finished high school now."
"Do you like a little moonshizzy, Dogfucker?"
"Sugar Taddy!"
"Beer!"

Pelt isn't kitschy, clever or witty, even though it looks as if it the filmmakers thought otherwise. I'm not even sure why movies like this get made. Be as cheap as you want to be while making a horror flick, but at least try your damnedest to make it good. Decent even. Low budget writers and directors need to stop thinking themselves more clever than they truly are. Save the humor for the professionals, and stick to the basic tenants of horror movies, you know, like making us give a shit what happens on screen, give us an interesting character or two, build some tension, make a story that's either interesting or at very least visually compelling...

That could have been compelling...
In movies this bad, where the characters inspire nothing but pure hatred from the audience, I usually find myself wishing a death on them all, because as shitty characters, they deserve it, This time however, I found myself wishing death on myself for sitting through this God awful mess. Not only is it a shoddy production from top to bottom and painful to sit through, but it's boring.

Why is it called Pelt? Why does the killer look like a farmer with his hat pulled low over his eyes? Where is the gratuitous nudity? Why was the ever present "lesbian kiss" so lame and goofy?

It really goes without saying that this movie is awful, and there's really no reason to even waste a post talking about it, save for one, and her name is Amber Bollinger. She deserves a little bit of love.

Take it all, Amber, take all of our love.
Amber Bollinger plays the slut of the group, and I mean the kind of slut who begs her BFF's boyfriend to plow her ass in the middle of the forest. I think that any time a girl is so adorable that she makes you genuinely care whether a dish-rag whore lives or dies is commendable. Amber Bollinger is that cute, and as it turns out, she's got herself a little career going involving music videos and commercials, most of which showcase her as being a fairly decent actress... of course it's the fact that she's really hot that we like the most, but she could actually be something in the horror genre if she'd catch a decent break or two.

She was in a little 2009 flick called Sutures (review here) that was decent, so we know she has it in her. She also showed decent screen presence in these music videos. Watch them and don't fall in love, I dare you:



See, she's cute, no? And she has certain "thing" about her, right? Let's hope we see more of her in the future, and that it involves a decent level of nudity when we do. Don't be a prude, Amber Bamber, and show us your Twitter!

Yes, that's what we mean by "Twitter."
Aside from one tasty little actress to enjoy, this movie brings nothing to the table, save for frustration. Go use your hard earned, recession weary dollars on something more worthwhile... like burning it in piles to make a statement.