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For years, cars in perfect working order have been found abandoned at
the side of a desert road, but it's not as if the police had done anything
much about it, basically because the desert is too big a place to search
for clues to begin with. Now eight college students go out into the desert
to do what they're expected to do - you know, party, have a few too many
beers, smoke a handful of joints, have some outside sex. Everything along
these lines works out fine at first, but then one of them finds ... a
human ear. They flee in a panic - but on the way to the next town, which
might be hours away, two of them (Philip Ferenchick, Candise Lakota)
develop a condition, eventually even die on the others. Then their cars
break down, and they come to the conclusion something has followed them,
has sabotaged their cars, and now it's after them. In a stressful
situation like that, all of our heroes lose their cool and are either at
each other's throats or simply lose their mind. Thing is, more and more of
them develop the same symptoms as their friends, and die eventually. In
the end, only the vegan of the group (Kiralee Hayashi) survives the
onslaught, basically becaus she claims she understood the creature after
them - whatever the creature was, actually. First of all, this
is a beautiful film to look at: The desert locations are breathtaking and
brought to film just right, most of the shots are wonderfully composed and
show a strong artistic streak, and despite postcard perfect sunlight
permeating the film, the whole thing is creepy as hell. Unfortunately, the
film doesn't quite manage to live up to its looks on a narrative level:
It's simply overpopulated by too many characters, and while at least some
of them seem interesting and fleshed out, some seem underdeveloped, while
several subplots concerning individual characters detract from the story
rather than add to it. Plus, by keeping the main menace of the movie in
the dark (figuratively speaking) throughout the thing, the film gets
repetitive in its shock situations and suspense scenes after a while and
doesn't manage to keep up tension throughout, especially at the end of the
film. Still, worth a look at least!
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