Horror fans usually love these types of anthology films. Check out our review of Southbound right here.









Oh! How highly original! Three hot

chicks in a broken down van.

The trend in anthological horror continues with this month's release of Southbound, a film fromsome of the people behind the V/H/S series. Now, take that with a grain of salt.





Nowhere near as good as the first entry in that series, Southbound is a boring effort with a few genuine jump scares, creepy music, effectual visuals and numerous intertwined stories centered on the road to hell. Hoping to cash in on the successes of other chaptered genre flicks, Southbound doesn't do nearly as much for horror as V/H/S did. Lacking a conceptual hook for its viewers while moving between connected segments with no real sequeway, something is amiss from the start. It's just not that good. The stories aren't well planned. The themes are repetitive. And the characters have no real drive and kinda suck.





With atypical religious underpinnings, standardized jabs at rural zealots, and ineffectual writing that borrows too heavily from other films, Southbound never really takes off. From the onset, the movie falls flat. It's not until the midway point that the stories take off with some brutal scenes of chest cavity exploration and exploding head shots. Unfortunately, all is for naught as Southbound isn't highly original or even interesting in the slightest. In fact, it feels desperate at times with straight up, near visual and tonal theft from movies like The Strangers and numerous other modern genre classics. People hide in closets as unknown visitors stalk their prey and brutally kill them. Sound familiar? Meh.





Dear god! I hate strawberry syrup!





I guess I expect more from my scary movies. Southbound does nothing new as it gives us a final sequence that feels forced and horrendously contrived. There's some cool retro sounding music and a few cool effects shots at the beginning. Other than that, most horror fans will be let down by this mangled production. Southbound is blatantly bad, lowest denominator, straight to VOD horror that has nothing going for it other than its soundtrack and some demonic looking baddies that are a CGI fetishists wet dream. Flat. Boring. Not good. Save your money. The poster is way cooler than the entire movie.









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Score

-CG