Reeker (2005)

Dir: Dave Payne

Very dodgy US indie effort about a group of partying teens who end up stranded at a spooky motel in the middle of the desert, whilst on their way to a rave. The game is soon afoot and they start getting picked off by a mystery killer. The twist? You can't see him; but you can smell him! Hence the title. All the requisite cliches of the genre are out in force and, whilst the gore FX are decent, I just felt as though this was a horror movie for people who've never seen a horror movie before. All its tricks and turns were so patently obvious it made me want to scream for all the wrong reasons. The frequent attempts at black humour were ill-timed and poorly delivered enough to feel downright uncomfortable and the CGI 'fumes' used to denote the killer's stench just looked ridiculous. This one started off with about two and a half stars, but just kept worsening with each increasingly ludicrous and predictable plot development leading up to the catastrophic, verboten twist. Pants. Big steaming pants. That's what you can smell. *