Screenhead

Much ado has been made of the fact that Staunton Hill represents the first ever release from Cameron Romero, son of legendary horror master George Romero. Well, the folks out at Anchor Bay sent me a copy, and I’ve got some terrible news.

Sadly, horror expertise must skip a generation, as Cameron’s outing is little more than a predictable sludge pile of blood spattered horror occasionally featuring torture porn.

Staunton Hill features a lively group of young folks on their way to a civil rights rally out in Washington DC, but aren’t getting there very fast as they’re on foot.  When offered a ride most of the way there, they eagerly accept, but when the truck breaks down and they’re back on foot, then all hell breaks loose.

Okay, when I say, “all hell breaks loose”, what I really mean is “three rednecks on a local farm lay waste to the travelers and render them into their component bits for creepy purposes I won’t describe since some of you may want to see this.”  This is all the sort of thing you’ve seen before with a few minor modifications–in fact, one wonders if Cameron never bothered to watch his dad’s stuff very often (it turns out he DID, it just doesn’t show in this one)  and instead blew all his time staring at The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because that’s really about all this is, just given a fresh coat of paint.

And this has no real relevance to the film itself, but dude, future note–it’s EXTREMELY bad form to use your DAD for a box quote.  There’s a reason you don’t list family members on a job application–it just looks desperate.  Like you couldn’t get anyone to actually say anything good about this depressingly bland tripe you’ve served up, so you turned to the closest thing you had to an actual name and begged a favor.  Admittedly, there’s one really interesting surprise in here, but that’s not much compared to the ninety minutes of more of the same I just sat through.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives a dismissive back of hand “bah” to Cameron Romero’s inaugural horror outing and gives it a three out of ten for managing to get one good surprise in there–that I won’t bother to spoil–but depends way too much on last names and nepotism to get where it is.

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