Staunton Hill (2009) - 1.5/4

Staunton Hill is deja vu all over again. It goes by like a greatest hits of sorts. It is a combination of Frontier(s) and Hostel, with hints of American Gothic and Texas Chainsaw Massacre for good measure. There's even a moment that might as well have been from Joyride.

The story is what you'd expect. A group of young, pretty adults find themselves enjoying the dangerous hospitality of a backwoods family with an interest in the organ trade. It's just a matter of when and how hard these evil rednecks are going to strike.

As such, the film is utterly predictable. The 'final girl' will be detectable within the first five or ten minutes, because the camera obsesses over her. The various slight twists that occur towards the end are telegraphed long before with very little subtlety.

Speaking of which, the lack of subtlety in Staunton Hill is a major problem. Cameron Romero (yes, George Romero's son) does not trust the audience to put two and two together on anything. Any link an audience could and should be expected to make is driven home with a flashback moment, often several, in case you couldn't pick it up on your own. The most egregious of which is that every time a character dies, flashbacks are given of the character from a few moments earlier in the film as a normal, happy person. Romero doesn't even trust his audience to comprehend how horrific human slaughter is on their own.

'Human slaughter' is the right term. This film is pretty brutal. There's a very explicit and subtlety-free moment where a monologue about the horrors of animal-butchering is intercut with one of the rednecks performing these techniques on a human. The humans are treated like meat for the slaughter, chopped up, flayed, scalped, in graphic detail. Anyone reasonably sane would pick up on this treatment right away, but Romero has to force it by giving shots of the character from earlier in the film, happy and talking.

The editing is generally that nervous, film-school-grad editing style most straight-to-video horror films show these days. There are lots of jumpcuts, MTV style intercutting, with awkward dubs that is just a few notches away from being Death Tunnel, the undisputed champion of this form of editing.

That's not to say nothing in this film works. It's just all stuff I've seen before, presented in a style I've seen before, with predictable moments and an uninspired plot. It is still horrific and at times suspenseful. The gore probably upstages everything else in this film, being quite well done and somewhat disturbing.

Staunton Hill is very much a mediocre affair. It's not bad, but not good enough to recommend. If you can't get enough of slow, predictable, backwoods slaughter-horror, then Staunton Hill is a modestly entertaining way to spend ninety minutes or so.

Bonus points:
For granny-killing action
For a television set that picks up broadcasts from the '50s
To "Buddy", for a truly creepy toy collection