It’s been a long time since I made reference to the AfterDark Horrorfest; that’s because the fourth one didn’t have a theater in Dallas, so I missed it last year. And then there wasn’t ever a fifth one. Except, there kind of was after all? They renamed it, and it doesn’t have a number attached anymore, but it is nevertheless happening this weekend. Well, five of the eight movies are, anyway. In many ways, this is convenient for me, as eight would have been a lot harder to accomplish. Much less the marathon of reviewing I’d be doing. (Not that this will be nothing.)

The festival definitely started off right this year. I don’t necessarily mean because of the contents of the first entry, Prowl, so much as because of its first scene, which showed a blonde girl running in terror through a dark forest. You basically cannot describe a more iconic horror movie image than that, you know? The problems after that are hard to pin down. The premise certainly works: a girl with dreams of escape from her small town life enlists the aid of her friends on a road trip to the big city, until circumstances conspire to place them square in the middle of a horror movie. The acting was fine, although very few of the characters had a chance to do much acting.

I think I have to blame the pacing. After all the trouble the script went to to rapidly isolate lead character Amber and leave her free to live or die on her own strengths, it… just stopped doing anything interesting. There are no pivotal moments of strength, or cunning, or bravery. Okay, there’s a half-hearted swipe at revenge, but mostly there are just a lot more shots of her running through moonlit factoryscapes, and as well as that works for setting a mood, it rapidly loses its charms as a full-on plot and character element. By the time the admittedly cool third act turn occured, it didn’t seem like anyone in our theater had it in them to care anymore.