my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   The Roost
Director:   Ti West
Year:   2005
Genre:   Horror
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   07.10.05

Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- The Sacrement

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
07.10.05Alamo DowntownThis Screening is part of event: AICN Horrorfest 2005
Next up is this low-budget new movie that showed at SXSW this year. The woman who introduced it talked a lot about Larry Fessenden who did this movie called Wendigo (also on Fangoria's list. i'm so knowledgeable). Then she sort of built this movie up a lot and said that Tom Noonan is the star. He's the super tall guy that's really really creepy. He was in Manhunter and Heat and stuff... So anyway, the woman also says that she wont tell us what the monster or creature is, but there is one.

So the film starts and Tom Noonan is like the host of a saturday late-night horror movie show... yeah like the grampa in Goonies 2. And he's onscreen for like five minutes then it's four teens who turn off the main road and get their car stuck in a ditch. It's all digital night photography so there's digital grain everywhere. There's also this old couple who are on their way... somewhere... and the old woman says to the old man "hey, are you sure you locked the old spooky barn?" and the old man says "oops, even though it's our barn, not only did i not lock it but i also have no idea of the source of that spooky sound that just came from the pitch dark inside. I guess I will check it out." Then the old lady waits a few minutes then says to herself "well crap, my hubby hasn't returned. That gate must be really hard to lock. I will go check it out and likewise also go into the pitch black barn to investigate the spooky sound."

Cut back to the sexy teens walking to the nearest house because their car's stuck in a ditch. They find the old people's house and proceed, one by one, to check out the dark spooky barn. So what's the big monster creature? some bats. I guess in this universe though, bats are actually terrifying and will chase you down instead of just fly away and maybe give you rabies if you try to pelt them with tennis rackets. So the kids try to barricade themselves INSIDE the spooky barn and there's this cop that dies or something and i guess the twist on these horrific bats is that if they bite you you turn into a zombie. So they are zombifying bats. Great.

The whole thing is super dark and very digital minicam low-budget. I'd overlook it if there was a good story or something but the whole thing's filled with really loud spooky soundtrack and cheap soundtrack queues to make you jump. I was pretty unimpressed.

After, the guy next to me asked how I liked it and I noted a few of my problems. He seemed to defend the film though so I dropped it. Horror fans during the day can be trouble. At 4 am they are not to be upset. Just like bears. bears in obscure old t-shirts. and scraggly beards.