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Overall Rating : 2.5/10
Directed By : Bryce Olson
Jennifer Tilly (Bride of Chucky)
Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club)
Jonathan Breck (Jeepers Creepers)
Jennifer Freeman (You Got Served)
Supplied By : MTI Home Video
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : February. 10, 2010
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| PLOT A group of teenage boys out to give their girlfriends a good scare on Homecoming night, which also happens to be Halloween, head to an abandoned house in an out-of-the-way fruit orchard, where they become part of a real life urban legend! |
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| THE REVIEW The plot for THE CARETAKER is really simple. It's the glorious night of the homecoming dance, and it also just so happens to be, Halloween October 31st. To make the night more fun, a couple of male students have paid the limo driver a few extra to take them and their girlfriends respectively to an abandoned house out in the middle of a grapefruit orchard. The reason for the boys' desire to go to such a place is that it has a history, and it's a haunted one. Hoping to scare the girls, one of the boys whom calls himself "Snail" tells the story that made the old house legendary in their town. The story is of an orchard caretaker named Adam who was overly possessive of his wife Tansy, so much so, that he chained her up in the house, and forbid anyone to see her. And had someone ever tried, or better yet, help her escape, he slaughtered them with a modified fright picker, he used as a deadly weapon. The two had a baby girl and eventually Tansy tried to escape with the child, an escape that would result in her death. That has 16 years prior according to legend, and since then, no one has seen Adam The Caretaker or his baby since - but when the teens begin to find freshly dead corpses along the orchid, and hear strange noises - they begin to believe that Adam has returned. As it turns out, they are correct, and he's brought his weapon with him. Marketing itself around small roles from three recognizable names like Jennifer Tilly, Judd Nelson and Jonathan Breck, is really the only thing that this, 2008 slasher(I have suspicions of it being filmed much earlier), THE CARETAKER has going for it. Because besides these three participants being in the film, THE CARETAKER is your typical slasher flick fare. The plot, for one, is nothing new at all; I group of teens go out in the middle of nowhere for some fun, somewhere they shouldn't be and guess what, they die. We have seen this type of thing over and over in a 100 plus Horror films over the past 30 years, executed in every way imaginable - THE CARETAKER is just another to add to the bottomless barrel. Usually what saves a film like this, no matter how many films they are similar to, is gore and body count. For some fans, the gore and the creative deaths make a film, no matter how many times it all seems similar. But in the case of THE CARETAKER there is very little blood and the gore and death scenes all happen away or off camera. The story here over is pretty lame, but some of the dialogue and the appearances of the aforementioned people keep you from turning it off completely, especially Jennifer Tilly, who seemed to know what she was getting into when she made this. As a whole, THE CARETAKER is just your, typically generic teem slasher, that consists us watching on as a group of teens start decreasing in number at the hands of some kind of killer, as we wonder, who will survive, if in fact, anyone will at all. And of course the killer has a motive for doing what he's doing, in which the viewer is to wait until the very end to find out what it is. Well, this film has just that, the twist ending that is to tie everything together. A really good film is supposed to conceal this information, making us guess to figure it all out, unfortunately, that just isn't the case here. THE CARETAKER is a highly predictable film, and if you don't figure it out sooner, you definitely will just after the one hour mark, when Jennifer Tilly blurts out a line of dialogue that gives the ending away, right then and there. Of course I won't tell you what it is here, but chances are you won't need to know anyway. Some of the writing in the script is sloppy, but this particular instance, is the worst offender. I know that most who rent this film, will do so because of the names listed on the cover - and I don't blame the filmmakers at all for employing such a strategy. But truthfully the names advertised do very little to contribute to this project, and probably worked only one day each on set, at most. |
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| GORE
METER 1.5/10 As I said, all of kills are either off screen or out of view, but there is a little blood, and few slash marks, if that counts. |
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MUSICAL
SCORE 1.5/10 Some indie rock, along with your typcal suspense stuff. | ||||
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM THE CARETAKER is not a very effective slasher film, simply because it's story is basically dead in the water due to it's originality. Perhaps if it brought something new, something of it's own, the outcome could have possibly been different. With this said, the cameos make it worth seeing at least once, I suppose, I have actually seen worse, at least this film has something going for it. |
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