Rites Of Spring: I'd Rather It Were A Nuclear Winter

Film: Rites Of Spring
Director: Padraig Reynolds
Year: 2011
Reviewer: Vincent Daemon

Happy New Year to all. Hope it was a good one, as the review I am about to bestow upon you is not.

The film involves some weird backstory about disappearing hikers, then we meet our current hikers. It's the same bland, annoying dullards we've come to expect. The film then abruptly shifts to some bank robbers, who can't stand each other, who hole up in a little cabin they find until the heat from their clumsy robbery dies down. This is all shot in the lackluster way so many of these cheap, seemingly direct-to-Netflix films are. There is no real excitement, just bland movement.

So, the hikers end up kidnapped and tortured by someone unseen, when this thing with a scythe jumps out of nowhere and begins chasing everyone around the woods. Sound a little disorienting and confusing? You betcha. This film gave me headache, and I found myself having a complete and utter lack of ability to pay attention or focus on it for more than 3 minutes at a time.

The film continues in this fashion until the various groups meet up. Then it merely becomes a standard slasher film, with minimal bloodshed.

I can honestly say I was disappointed, as I loved the poster art for this, and the description sounded like it may have had promise. It looked and sounded like perhaps a throwback to the good old days of survivaslist horror, old-school style. I am a fan of the genre, and I love flicks about demented hick families in the woods. Most of them stink, sure, but at least there is an entertainment value. There is no entertainment value here. Just a lot of people running around in the dark, screaming, being chased by a slightly deformed guy with a scythe. There were some points early on, however, that were reminiscent of the odd Hal Holbrook survivalist film Rituals from 1977. That gave me a bit of interest at first, but that interest quickly degenerated to my wondering if I should masterbate again as it was far more entertaining than anything I was going to find here.

Rites Of Spring is a mess of a film. It's a poorly put together mash-up of survivalist, crime, and slasher genres that never really goes anywhere, and in the end seems reminiscent of everything that makes me not want to watch movies.

Stay Sick,

Vincent Daemon

---- Vincent Daemon's short fiction has appeared in over 24 publications, and he just put his first short story collection, Bury Me In A Nameless Grave: A Collection Of 11, together to eventually be published. He is also editor of the annual Grave Demand magazine, as well as a freelance editor for hire in his down time. He can be found on facebook, and at his blog The Writings Of A Depraved Mind http://vincentdaemon.blogspot.com/?zx=c2884c7b8567b656 , and contacted at vdaemon13@gmail.com ----