Recent Reviews
DVD Review: The Roost
By John Marrone
Oct 2, 2006, 18:26

Directed by:  Ti West
Running Time:  80 minutes
Body Count:  8

- trailer (flash)

Im here to set some people straight on a film called The Roost, which will be released on DVD tomorrow, October 3rd.  If you visit the official website and read some of the comments that get thrown up on the screen, you'd think that Jesus came back to Earth and made a horror film.  So what if Bloody Disgusting, Fangoria, TV Guide, Dread Central, the New York Times and seemingly everybody else is praising this movie.  Fools!  An otherwise mediocre film has been hyped beyond reason, and its time to throw some reality into this.

"Now wait a minute!"  you say.  "This director did a hell of a low budget job.  It brings back great memories of those great indie splatter films of yesteryear.  The soundtrack, the 16mm cinematography!"

"NAY!"  I say!

Its not the directors fault.  I will say that he did a pretty good old fashioned, shoestring budget slasher on the nostalgia front.  This is one of those cases where a lot of loud voices gave this film way too much credit, destroying the little bit of natural redeemability that it possessed.

As your hear of The Roost - or stumble by the official website - you will see a lot of hoopla.  Words like classic and masterpiece being thrown around.  Many writers putting their feet in their mouth.  Its "interesting".  Its filmed in an Evil Dead like 16mm film quality.  For a second you remember the day and, ok, cool.  The film is excruciatingly low budget - but thats never made us dislike anything before.  The soundtrack - ok - its VERY 80's slasher film.  Screeching violins to your nerve's discontent.  The only problem is most of this experience is following very uninteresting people around in a barnhouse as they take every... single... step... real... slowly... in... the... dark... and... down... every... hall... zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Im being hard on The Roost - its faintly interesting.  But a classic?  My god, no...  It begins quite endearingly enough like the beginning of a late night public access horror show - a ghoulish "caretaker" of sorts, introducing you to this week's tale of spine tingling suspense and terror.  This week, four friends on the way to a wedding go off the road in the middle of the night in...  The Roost!  The first half of this film is either in a car or in the eye killing dark, with a bunch of friends lightly bickering and chatting, yada yada yada - soon they're looking for a phone and stumble upon a lone house with barn.

Inside this barn is The Roost.  Vampire bats of sorts, swooping around like a ravenous flock, attacking anyone who walks through.  They kill the owners of the home and trap the lost foursome and a policeman inside.  Every step not carefully taken ends up in a devoured victim.  Whats particularly troublesome about it all, is that the dead (everybody say it with me) come back to life and attack the living.  They turn into zombies.  Soon everyone is tip toeing around the halls, minutes are creeping by like hours, and your scenario unfolds, low budget style, with some very mediocre gore and effects.  Its obviously underfinanced, but thats not its drawback - the story is a holy cow sleeper until something happens, and when it does, its semi interesting, but nothing you cant fall asleep to while watching.  The story is about as gripping as an amputee.

Ive really squeezed all I can out of this review.  I could have just written, "If Sam Raimi made Friday the 13th back in the 80's and switched bats and zombies for Mrs. Voorhees, this would be the result."  But Ti West isn't Sam Raimi - and when you grind away on the Evil Dead violin, redden your moon with blood, use film as your medium and rip off Evil Dead, Im not going to go so far as to call you a classic - but it was a unique production for a low budget horror film by today's standards, and thats whats appealing about it.

Final analysis:  Its a bit fun and nostalgic, but some of the people praising this film the way they are need to have their head examined.  What made Evil Dead and Friday the 13th classics werent the film quality and the underbudgeted efforts - it was the saga, the balls to the wall gore and terror adventure.  16mm and violins do not a masterpiece make - no matter how much you are trying to bring it back to be appreciated, you need hooks, like a good story or interesting characters.  This had neither to be quite frank.  This is black flatness for 40 minutes and nothing you havent seen before - in fact I drooled, stuck in a frozen state from lack of stimulation.  The latter half, if you can get past the almost unendurabe, monotonous hall lurking, is campy and some half decent fun with beer in hand.  Check the website and read those comments.  Its been way overrated...  Somebody had to say something.

 
- Official Site

DVD Features Include:   Region 1
Keep Case - Sensormatic
Widescreen - 16.9
Audio:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround - English
Additional Release Material:
Documentary - TRUTH ABOUT BATS
Featurette - THE MAKING OF THE ROOST
Student Film
Text/Photo Galleries:
Photo Gallery

CLICK HERE to purchase from Amazon.com