 Directed by Patrick Syversen, Starring Courtney Hope, Ruta Gedmintas, Joshua Bowman, Perdita Weeks, Jamie Blackley, Oliver Hawes. Horror, USA, 2010, Approx. 81 minutes.
Released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray by After Dark Films on 11th April 2011.
Amber (Courtney Hope) is tired of living in the small town of Famfield. The strange visions she keeps having only heighten her desire to move to a big city and escape. With the help of her five close friends, they start a road trip to Chicago. When car trouble abandons them on the roadside, they accept the offer of a lift from a passing truck driver (Bernard). Unfortunately for the group however, Bernard has no plans on taking them to their destination.
Amber's life is unfulfilled. She works in a restaurant, her father is dead, and her mum an alcoholic. Aside from some strange visions and bad dreams, in an alcoholic state her mum let's slip that she was adopted. This makes her more determined to move to Chicago. She has less than 24 hours however to get the rental deposit to the landlord to secure the apartment.
After she manages to enlist the help of her five close friends (Suzy, Peter, Eric, Ray and Fiona), they embark on a roadtrip, only to be thwarted by engine trouble. When a truck driver stops to offer assistance however, they plead him to take them to the City. They decide that Eric will ride up front with Bernard for safety, whilst the others camp out in the back of the hauler, with strict instructions not to open the cargo of boxes inside (which we later find out are full of blood).
Things seem to be going ok until some bumps in the road make the friends wary. When Eric then fails to answer his phone (apparently asleep), and with the remaining five trapped in the hauler, they can only wait until the truck eventually stops. The door opens for the friends to find themselves alone in an abandoned slaughterhouse. With no way out, the friends investigate the old building. They are not alone however, and the shuffling and screeching noises soon turn into them being violently attacked by bloodthirsty human creatures (which we later discover are Vampires), hell-bent on killing them all.
With the three girls managing to seek temporary sanctuary in the back of the truck, they are trapped, frightened and alone. What follows is a cat and mouse fight for survival, but being weaker and outnumbered, the odds are against them.
Prowl is your basic stalk and slash type of movie. Despite a sort of twist towards the end, its otherwise very formulaic, with the usual mix of running and hiding, and characters being knocked off one by one. On the positive side, it looks pretty good, and is well acted by the key characters. There is also a fair amount of blood and action to keep things moving along at a decent pace.
Overall, its hard too find any specific faults with Prowl, the problem is that it's just another ok film in a very crowded genre.
Dino Marabese
|
