I am determined to get through this pile of DVDs and I got this one out. It would be too much to hope that I’d get pleasant surprise with every film and odds are I’m going to have few that are nothing special and I’m afraid that this one of those. It is not a terrible film – it is far from unwatchable but there wasn’t anything much that stood out about it either.
The film opens 15 years earlier in the home of a junkie mother at home with her two young sons. She is getting increasingly strung out waiting for her boyfriend to come home. When he arrives he starts being a pushy violent arsehole to the older boy. In response the younger boy goes and gets a handgun and shoots the boyfriend dead then he shoots his mother dead too.
In the present young army vet Jared (Mike Erwin) is fixing his car when his girlfriend Kate (Cameron Richardson) arrives. Jared proposes to Kate and she happily accepts his proposal right away. Their two friends Rick (Aaron Paul) and Jessica (Kelly Kruger) arrive and they share their good news. Rick feels trapped in his relationship with Jessica since he got her pregnant and really doesn’t want to marry her.
Tthey go for a drive and Jared has a road race (Illegal of course) with a yellow sports car. His older car is holding its own against the flashier newer model but then the engine has a major blowout and he has to fork over his cash to the smug winner. Before they realise they are stuck in the middle of nowhere they let him drive off without getting a lift. It’s only four miles from town but Jessica whines a lot about not being able to walk that far because she’s pregnant and even though everybody else think she’s being very unreasonable they agree to a compromise plan of walking one mile back to an old scrap yard in the hope of finding what Jared needs to fix his car even though it really needs a garage to do that.
At the scrap yard they all search around for a car with right parts. Rick starts messing around with a handgun shooting at things. Everyone tells him to stop but he fires off one more shot anyway. The bullet must have ricocheted wildly because next thing Kate has been shot in the side of the abdomen. After everyone has called Rick an irresponsible idiot Jared decides to run to town and get help while Jessica tries to stanch the bleeding.
Jared returns with Sheriff Macabee (Roger Perry) Deputy Kane (Travis Aaron Wade) Doctor Richardson (Lisa Ann Walter) and an EMT (Erin Soto). Kate, Jessica and Rick are all missing and they begin to doubt Jared’s story until he shows them the pool of blood where Kate was lying. They split up to search the scrap yard for Jared’s friends. The EMT soon comes across Jessica’s body hanging upside down from a hoist dripping blood. They discover Jessica was shot dead. Jared is very worried about Kate and they carry on searching and Macabee calls the station for some back–up.
The rest of the film is them searching the scrap yard for Kate and Rick while a killer in a welding mask attacks them. The main suspect is a newly-escaped prisoner but when Frank Jeffries (Scoot McNairy) the grandson of the yard owner shows up I thought his get-up and accent was so ridiculously over-the top that he was supposed to be in disguise. He’s supposed to be some really low class trailer trash and his performance is so stupid it spoils the mood of the film. If this was some actor I had never heard of I would just blame him but Scoot McNairy is a good actor so this dumb performance must come from the writer or director.
This film does not have a high body count and the killings are not that horrific. The ending was not too much of a surprise either. A couple of characters seem to have wandered on from a comedy film but they really don’t fit in this type of film which otherwise plays everything pretty straight. I don’t recommend this film so if you must watch it do so at your own risk.
Rating 5/10
Nameless Horror 
One response to “Review: Wreckage”