Add to the fact that it's an IFC Midnight film and I was sold. I was excited to throw this bad boy in and see some hopefully messed up and disturbing indie-horror goodness.
I hate being lied to. This movie sucked.
While it wasn't as painfully bad as some other indie horror I've seen this year, mostly because it did feature some unique genre blending to mix things up a bit, "Rites of Spring" fell victim to too much obfuscation and complete lack of any resolution. And while I don't need everything spelled out clearly for me to enjoy a film, it helps if I at least have some idea of what in the crap is going on by the time the credits start rolling.
"Rites of Spring" combines two different stories (of two different genres). The first story is about a kidnapping plot involving a guy named Ben (AJ Bowen), who absconds with the daughter of his rich ex-boss with the help of his brother, his girlfriend (?), and a clearly psychopathic dude named Paul. The plan is to hold her ransom for $2 million dollars, which starts off just fine. That is, until Paul, being clearly psychopathic, decides to shoot the rich dude's wife in the head "Just to show he's serious."
Okay. A few things. First off, you broke into his house with paintball masks and a gun, tied him up, and ran out of the house with his daughter in a sack over your shoulder. I have a suspicion he won't think you're bluffing. Why would you even think he'd assume that? Do you seriously think he might not pay to get his daughter back? If you thought that was even a possibility, why even target him? Find someone else.
"What? This?! Nah, this a gun shaped lighter! I'm joshing ya, bro! Dude, you need to lighten up, man. You take stuff too seriously."
Secondly, on the off chance you get caught, you just ramped the charges up from kidnapping to first degree murder. Have fun with that. And finally, when you go ahead and blow his wife's head off, it increases the chances that he'll just go ahead and go Charles Bronson on your dumb ass. And guess what? That's exactly what happens. Which is actually a nice twist. I liked that.
The rich dude completely dupes Ben's dumb brother and winds up at their meeting place with a loaded gun. He's got them dead to rights, too, and the movie would have probably been over right there had he not been betrayed and shot by the babysitter. Allow me to explain. You see, during the kidnapping Paul ties up the babysitter who was also at the house and brings her with them. Once rich guy unties her, you find out she's really working with Paul the whole time, and they were planning on killing Ben and the rest and taking all the money. And no, I have no idea why Ben is working with, once again, the clearly psychopathic Paul. Whatever. It's kind of stupid.
The other story involves two girls, one being Rachel (Anessa Ramsey). They are abducted from a bar one night and wake up in the barn, hanging from the rafters. A creepy old cracker (Marco St. John) is a dude who has been abducting and sacrificing to Teh Evils what seems like several young women every spring for roughly 30 years. Every March 21st he does this. Like clockwork. So his crops grow. The town is notorious for it. And he has never. been. caught.
Really.
REALLY!?
You're telling me that this guy is roughly the most prodigious serial killer in United States history, and it's just essentially Farmer Fran sacrificing people in his barn so that, what? His corn is slightly fuller? Dude, get some pesticide. I don't think pacts with Satan is required to make crops happen. It's a fairly well documented science. Somebody please toss this man a Farmer's Almanac!
I'm not going to go into the whole semantics of police investigation, but that is ridiculous. Being a serial killer is hard work. Seriously, it is. You have to be smart about it, otherwise they'll catch you. And they'll do it fairly quickly, too. Hell, even I'd start piecing together that perhaps it's a ritualistic, possibly shamanistic thing when they are always abducted right before the first day of Spring in a rural area with a large farming community where a good crop turnout is very important. Maybe the police should check the farms and look for the one with the GIANT ALTER TO BAAL BEING USED AS A SCARECROW!?!?
Pictured above - Subtlety.
Anyway, Rachel's friend gets sacrificed in a scene that started off with potential but ended up just being kind of lame. And while I normally applaud a film for letting the audiences' imagination do most of the work, since it's scarier that way, there is a difference between being subtle and not showing us anything at all.
Take for instance the scene right before the sacrifice. Creepy Old Cracker removes the girl's clothes with a razor, then washes her body before putting this cow mask on her. Yes, that is pretty silly, but it could have worked. That scene is good because it's slow paced and builds up the tension for what will happen after. Then the next scene, Rachel wakes up and her friend is gone. She manages to escape and looks for her, only to find her hanging in the next room, still wearing the mask. When Rachel goes to take the mask off, we see her friend has been beheaded.
Right there, that is not scary. That is a complete waste of the scene before it. That scene was intense. And it's thrown away on a gag that isn't shocking or even really gory. It's just a body without a head. Okay. Whatever. We have no context for how it happened, what the girl went through, or even who did it.
For comparison, in the film "Law Abiding Citizen," Gerard Butler tortures a man to death in horrifying ways. Seriously, it's enough to make you gag. But you don't see a single frame of it. What you DO experience though, is Gerard Butler describing exactly what he's about to do to the guy in painstaking detail. That's the part that makes you want to retch. And when it cuts away to the police investigating later, all we see is the aftermath of blood and body parts strewn about, so our mind is going full blast processing the carnage that went down, which is disturbingly easy because he already told us all we needed to know. That's how to effectively do a "tell don't show" scene.
If you're not telling or showing in a "tell don't show" scene, all you're doing is "don't."
Once Rachel escapes she is chased by the monster that killed her friend, which I think it's also the creature that Creepy Old Cracker is worshiping. I actually have no idea, but it would appear to be the case since it's the thing killing the sacrifices. It doesn't make too much sense though, because Creepy Old Cracker keeps it locked in his basement, which doesn't seem very worshipful. And how it's supposed to help with the crops growing, I have no idea, because it doesn't seem to do much more than just sit in its hole and occasionally kill people.
It'd be like saying Jason Voorhees brings the rain by sacrificing the kids at Crystal Lake.
It's at this point that the two films collide as Rachel busts into the building that the whole ransom thing is going down, with the creature right on her heels. It proceeds to kill a few of them, until all that's left is the Rachel, Ben and the chick who may or may not be his girlfriend. And what of the little girl who was kidnapped? Runs away into the woods, never to be seen in the movie again. That's the first of a series of plot threads with no resolution.
That's when we also find out the shocking twist that Ben and Rachel USED TO WORK TOGETHER!!!
DUN DUN DUN!!!!!
Wait a minute...that means...my god!!!
Nothing. That means nothing. It's a coincidence that goes nowhere. Why would you even put that in the script? Irony? Symbolism? What? It has nothing to do with anything. Whatever. The stupid thing is almost over.
The survivors predictably end up running right to the farm Rachel escaped from, the odds of which are substantial considering the 360 degree choice they were presented with, as ANY direction is equally valid when running from a murdering demon spawn with a giant axe. Creepy Old Cracker shows up again, captures them immediately, and gets ready to sacrifice Ben and his girlfriend. It's at this point where AJ Bowen shows off his acting chops by delivering lines like "What are you doing?" and "Why are you doing this?" and "Where are you taking her?" with the intensity of asking the delivery guy what took so long, and why he should have to pay full price for late pizza.
Careful, Creepy Old Cracker. Torture him anymore and he might raise his voice at you.
It's at this point we find out why Creepy Old Cracker is doing is. The answer is - I have no idea. Then we find out what the creature is. The answer is - I have no idea. Then we find out why the creature is killing everything in sight despite the fact that apparently all it is interested in is sacrifices set up by Creepy Old Cracker. The answer is - Ok you get the idea. What I'm saying is that this movie doesn't explain jack about anything.
So Ben's maybe-girlfriend gets killed in a stupid manner, Ben may have gotten killed in a stupid manner, and Rachel is too stupid to figure out that if someone is standing on the roof of your car an easy method of their removal involves HITTING THE DAMN GAS PEDAL. And she does this twice. Ugh. Then there's this scene at a gas station which implies that people in the community are in on the whole sacrifice thing, which like everything else is never explained. Then Rachel maybe kills the creature and runs away into the credits which appear out of nowhere to stop the movie before any questions can be answered.
Listen, "Rites of Spring," I know you think you're like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," but seriously screw you for trying to rip off the ending. You're nowhere near as good as TCSM.
You see, the difference between those two films is that the end of TCSM was the end of the story. She got away. Yes, it's abrupt, and yes the villain still lives but it's an ending. "Rites of Spring" just stops. To say this is an unsatisfying ending is beyond an understatement. We don't know the fate of Ben. We don't know the fate of Rachel. We don't know the fate of Creepy Old Cracker. We don't know the fate of the creature. By the end, we don't know anything about anything, really.
And why would you leave all these questions up in the air when all I wanted to know throughout the whole damn affair was WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!
You know what's the quickest way to not give a rat's ass about a movie? For me it's not knowing what's going on, and having the movie be too crappy to care about it. Except when it thinks it's so good that it doesn't have to explain anything. That's worse because it's pretentious, too.
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Rites of Spring" was a huge disappointment. Despite some interesting genre mixing it never manages to become interesting or exciting or scary at any point in the film. Every time that possibility shows up it is quickly snubbed out by cliche or simply cutting away from the interesting bits. You know it's bad when I'm left saying at the end: "I would have rather watched a torture porn movie." And I hate torture porn.
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