Rites of Spring

Director - Padraig Reynolds (The Election)
Starring - Shanna Forrestall (The Last Exorcism), Anessa Ramsey (YellowBrickRoad, Footloose), and Katherine Randolph (Return of the Killer Shrews)
Release Date - 2011
Genre - Horror/Crime
Tagline - "Fear has a season"
Format - Streaming (Netflix)

Rating (out of 5):

     I love watching movies regardless of their quality and I escpecially love watching movies from my collection.  I have so many that I do not have the time to watch them all when I buy them.  However, sometimes I just want to watch something that sucks less.  I had to get away from watching those shitty public domain films.  I still have a few left but my mind could not take anymore.  I turned to my Xbox to see what all I had available in my instant queue.  I have so many movies in my instant queue that makes choosing one to watch a difficult task.  I had heard a lot of good things about this one and decided to give it a go.

     The film follows two men and a young lady as they plan a heist.  The three plan on kidnapping a rich man's daughter and holding her for ransom with information obtained from one of his employees.  However, one of the men has alternative motives and kills the man's wife with out the other two knowing about it.  They get the daughter and head off to an abandoned building out in the countryside to await another man to pick up the cash from the drop.  Unfortunate for them, the rich man now has a vendetta and vows to kill them all.  At the drop off he holds the pick up man at gun point and has him take him to the thieves that killed his wife and took his daughter.  The rich man with a gun is not the only thing out for blood.  The entire ordeal just happens to take place the one time of year a killer humanoid creature walks the Earth in search of blood sacrifices.  When the rich man arrives to kill the thieves, so does the crooked thief's informant, the young girls babysitter.  She shoots the rich man in the back, however, she is immediately struck down by the creature and an all out chase ensues for the remaining thieves.

      I had no idea what this movie was about going in to this thing.  The poster art made me think it was a slasher, and for the most part it was.  However, the movie has two stories going at once and they converge in the middle.  The story, though it is two different stories, are neither one that original.  The first story is a crime drama-esque  and is nothing new nor clever and to be completely honest this particular segment could have been trimmed down a lot.  This particular segment does not look and feel like a horror movie which throws the film off a bit.  The second story involving the creature reminded me a lot of the film Jeepers Creepers with this one appearing every year instead of every 20.  The acting is actually very good.  I have seen my fair share of horror films so I have heard more screaming women than I actually care to.  However, in this movie when the girls scream you actually feel for them.  They look as if they are actually in pain and genuinely scared.  Also, the actor that portrays the asshole thief that kills the rich man's wife does a magnificent job.  He does a great job at building the character up until you utterly despise him.  After 15 minutes I was hoping he would die.  Finally, the special effects in this one are actually really good.  We get some nice stock slasher kills filled with good blood and dismemberment.  However, we do not get a lot of true gore.  I am completely fine with that because the kills are still good and bloody.  I also liked the way the creature looked.  It is nothing spectacular nor that detailed but it still effective and does the trick at creating a menacing killer.  Overall, this movie could have been an outstanding modern slasher flick but instead tried to be a crime drama hybrid which makes this one a little better than mediocre.  I still recommend this one but don't expect it to be a straight forward slasher.