Review of Southbound (2015) by Quincy T — 25 Feb 2016

For one trip from dusk till dawn, "Southbound" is a fascinating scenic route filled with troubled travelers and dark fears.

"Southbound" is a unique kind of anthology, it provides vague connection between the events which might just be intermingling tragic tales. It spans across five stories that occur in a dry desert highway in the middle of nowhere. These are unexpectedly captivating and even though they don't follow the typical rule of horror narrative, the culmination is a delightfully fast and eerily immersive nocturnal tour.

Throughout the five accounts, "Southbound" offers finely produced effectively terrorizing moments. Each story is arguably different in tone, Siren, the one with girl band is slower paced with creepy cult ambiance. While The Accident has much more rapid pace and utterly bloody. It's a good part of the direction to make these stories seemingly interweaving, although there's a distinct difference on how they approach the horror.

These are not heavily narrated stories and the shift in narrative course could be jarring at times, yet this isn't necessarily a flaw. It has enough time to cram five short stories in a consistent pace without plodding any one of them. The transition is kept in manageable fashion and each new tale starts with decent roster of characters.

It could be a bit startling to those not familiar with horror or anthology genre, casual viewers might expect one straight story line and that's not the case in this desolated highway. Also, one or two character doesn't have the same quality in acting. However, this doesn't take away much from the scare, which fortunately is invested on escalation of tension rather than generous use of jump scares.

In a funny way this is hot potato of misery, thrown around to the nearest unlucky company, it will be a night of unbashful unbridled horror on the hazardous road.