Review of The Black Waters of Echo's Pond (2010) by Sun K — 13 Apr 2010

Boy...I was misled with this movie. Heard Howard Stern (of all people) reading an ad for it on his morning show. Sounded like a through back to the 80's horror/slasher films that I grew up with. My expectations were pretty high for this film.

So...the film...this should have been a straight to DVD picture. Complete B movie (not that that is a bad thing) but it never really went anywhere.

Story starts out in the 1920's with a group of explorers discovering a Temple in Turkey dedicated to Pan. Yes...Pan...the goat man that walks upright and plays a flute of some sort. The man financing this exploration has his henchmen return to Maine (yeah...Maine...really) and build a game of some sort using what was discovered in the Temple of Pan. Fast forward to present day and a group of friends end up on an island in Maine for a weekend getaway. They are greeted by Pete (Robert Patrick) who tells them a scary story about a killer that wandered the island, slitting the throats of those that he came in contact with "from ear to ear". Really...what the hell was Pete doing on this island? His character could have been removed entirely from this movie and he wouldn't have been missed. Oh...and what relationship did he share with Rick (James Duval)? Anyway...I digress...Pete leaves the college kids, who include twins (yep, twins), an aspiring actress, two loan officers, the twins boyfriends and a "drunk". They find an old game in the basement of the house that they are staying in and decide to play it since the lights are out and they have nothing else to do. The game leads each of the friends to see something about another friend that causes them to turn into killers...of each other. There is a bit of a twist at the end but nothing that made it worthwhile.

Lots of bad special effects (I can picture the people off screen throwing around the fake blood) and even worse acting and very typical killings (chainsaw, rake, etc...). The accents that some of these people had made it very difficult to understand them from time to time in the movie. The music was really bad, ramping up and down just when it needed to so you were prepared for what was happening.

Audience reaction was a bit of chuckling during the killings...yep, out loud laughing...mostly from two women that were old enough to be my grandmother.

HOT GIRL ALERT - They are all hot...did I mention the hot twins played by Electra and Elise Avellan (from Deathproof/Grindhouse)? Then there is Mircea Monroe who does show a bit during a shower scene. Lastely, there is the very attractive Danielle Harris. None of this hotness is enough to save this movie...

SUMMARY - 2 out of 10. I think there was some potential to this movie but it was lost very early on. Bad acting, bad special effects, bad accents....bad movie...Skip it....