The Roost

This film is one of those pleasant little surprises that makes great use of its low budget, especially its setting. Kudos to the staffer who found the barn that serves as the movie's main set piece and to the director for knowing how to use it. The cast does quality work, particularly Wil and Vanessa Horneff, who come up with just the right emotions to make their reactions convincing. If I have one complaint, it's the final out come on the covered bridge. I felt cheated. I can't say too much without spoiling it for other viewers, but I'd have loved something less predictable, say, like Wil Horneff coming up with a good left hook at the big moment.

Where to begin? There were just so many things wrong in this movie. Well, let's start with the fact that I made it 40 minutes into the movie and nothing, absolutely nothing had happened to keep me interested. So I turned it off out of sheer and pure boredom. And the quality of the movie just felt like it was shot on someone's personal digital video camera. It was gritty and dark, and very far from a proper movie production. When I buy a movie I expect a certain level quality. In the 40 minutes I suffered through, two (possibly three) deaths had occurred, but we had seen nothing of it. So it was a borefest of epic proportions. The acting in "The Roost" was mediocre at best. And it felt like some of the actors didn't fully buy into this movie themselves. I will never make a return trip to finish this incredibly dull movie, and it will now stand to collect dust in my collection.

As a lover of all things horror, I started getting angry at all the terrible remakes that were coming out. Couldn't America, the refiner of all things horror, come up with anything fresh? What had happened? After seeing The Roost, I realized that my problem was that I was looking to Hollywood for the answer - when all throughout film history the true great horror films were coming from independent theater. Although The Roost is not necessarily destined for Horror film greatness throughout time, it is a fresh look at the genre and generates some genuine scares/insights into fear. It successfully creates suspense without necessarily showing the violence, and the element of the unknown is maintained throughout the film (as opposed to just showing us the bad guy and scaring with gore). This film is definitely worth your time if you appreciate people who are working to further the horror genre. If not, go see The Fog remake.

Merlin Tuttle presents a feature on the DVD about the importance of bats to our ecosystem, that is both informative and entertaining. Unfortunately "The Roost" presents bats in stereotypical fashion as evil. The worst part of all this is that the movie is minimalist entertainment, minimal lighting, minimal logic, minimal storyline, minimal character development, minimal meaningful dialog, and minimal steady camera. All this adds up to not much more than one would expect from a zombie film. The bats get another bad reputation exposure, really for no reason, as "The Roost" relies on such minimalist material that it is barely watchable. - MERK

I just caught The Roost at SXSW--my friends and I had a great time with it. Reminded me of staying up and watching Night Flight and horror movies at sleep overs as a kid. Loved the vintage horror host framework and that it never became campy or self parody. It was also refreshing to see a scary movie that is a true monster movie rather than another slasher, bogeyman or demon flick--not that I don't like that type of horror, but a good monster movie seems to be a rarity. The theater was packed which meant that it was also rewarding to see a film that made people jump and squeal (the guy two seats down from me was hugging his knees at one point with his hands over his ears). It had great atmospheric music and a cool use of horror programs coming from all the radios that created an eerie effect. I'm totally impressed that this is a first time director who made this with next to nothing. Horror fans should love it!