Farmer Sam's (Bill Moseley) ancestors have been among the founders of the community he lives in, and his farm has been in family possession for centuries, so naturally he sees himself as a bit of a fixture in town - and to properly celebrate that, he puts on a haunted hayride every Halloween, much to the amusement of the locals. Thing is, his farm has fallen on hard times as of yet, and the mayor (Allyson Malandra) and her two assistants (Brooke Stacy Mills, Shelby Hightower) want to pretty much pressure him into selling some of his land to some land developer in their favour - which is an absolute no-no for Sam. There's also a quartet of youngsters (Aaron Dalla Villa, Casey Donnelly, Davy Raphaely, Robb Stech) who have great fun vandalizing his family graveyard and killing one of his dogs, and then there are the local sheriff (Kane Hodder) and his deputy (Graham Wolfe) who bear a natural grudge against him - and at one time when tazering almost kill him. Sam has a simple solution for this, put on a new even scarier hayride where the mayor and company, the sheriff and his deputy, and professional complainer Karen (Denise Parella) and her shyster husband Dick (Jared Michael Delaney) are all invited - while the youngsters are sure enough to show up even uninvited to stir trouble. Sam makes his exclusive audience an offer, if they have any complaints after the hayride, he'll skip town for good and leave his land to the city council, but if they feel properly entertained they leave him be. Now on paper this sounds like a bet he's sure to lose, but thing is, Sam and his scare actors have set up quite a few death traps along the way ...

Now this is a rather unusual film, since here you'll find yourself pretty much rooting for the killers, as their victims are pretty much bottom-of-the-barrel human beings whose sole function seems to be making farmer Sam's life miserable - so seeing him snap eventually comes across as perfectly relatable. And his ways to do away with his victims also have something darkly ironic to them. Now sure, complicity with a killer might not be everyone's thing, but even besides that Hayride to Hell is a pretty cool ride, the direction is genre savvy and on point, the thing's flowing nicely, and the cast is rock solid, all of which adds up to rather awesome genre entertainment.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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