As you know by now I am partial to a bit of Slasher horror. The Scream movies are some of my favorite films, and even in more recent memory I have forgiven some truly terrible films (Wrong Turn sequels anyone?), but sometimes a movie is so bad that I was looking at my watch from around the 45 minute mark wishing it would bloody end.

Blackburn is your usual middle of nowhere  kind of horror plot, a group of teens find themselves trapped between a forest fire and a hard place, the hard place being a rock slide. Trying to find a place to spend the night, the five friends enter an abandoned mine where they think a couple, who they saw a few hours previous, are possibly staying. Inside the group are hunted down by three former inmates of an insane asylum who aren't to happy about having guests.

I mentioned the Wrong Turn Sequels earlier for a reason, and that reason is Blackburn has that wrong turn deformed hillbillies kind of edge to it. Difference between the two films? the Wrong Turn films pull it off very well, with a much better story arch. Blackburn unfortunately does not. We are given a cast of characters you couldn't give two hoots about, a setting which seems familiarly like the mine scenes from Until Dawn, and a paper thin story which loses momentum halfway though the film. It is full to the brim with the usual horror cliches, for example we get the two couples where two of the opposite sex of each couple is sleeping with each other, they get caught then one dies. The problem with this film is that there seems to be hardly any care from the hurt party. Why isn't our lead more pissed off? but hey ho this is just a tiny problem in a whole ball of problems.

Positives? this isn't one of the worst slasher films out there and, knowing the lower budget horror films of recent time, you will be seeing this either on Netflix or in HMV for £6.99 pretty quickly. There is a chance the more forgiving horror fans, the ones who like a more cheese covered stab and go style of film, will enjoy this. I mean hell if the characters and story were more polished this would have had a lot of potential for a few films, but to be honest I couldn't care less about the five teens, I didn't give a crap about the back story of the killers and I just found myself getting annoyed at the lack of any emotion of the final girl, especially in the final scene.

Wait till the bargain bin for this one horror fans.

​THE STORY:
After coming to the aid of a dying sick man in the Chilean mountains, professional cyclist, Joe (Bryce Draper) and girlfriend, Stephanie (Natalie Burn) must flee and hide from the murderous thugs that are hot on his trail.  But as the man’s sickness takes hold, his saviours will soon wish they had left him to the wolves…
 
Downhill is that rare beast that takes its time to fully realise itself.  It blends genres, blurs the edges and leaves you with few answers and about a thousand more questions.  It leaves some familiar breadcrumbs for you to follow that might seem out of place at first glance, but it’s only trying to ease you into stranger territory than your run-of-the-mill survivor thriller.
 
Aside from running for their lives, our capable cast is brought face-to-face with some pretty gross body horror, verging on creepy creature feature-esque-ness, presented to them in the guise of a potential medical disaster movie.  And they still helped him anyway.  Aw…
 
Initially dividing opinion as well as being criticised by some for being “all over the place”, Downhill’s plot is pretty simple to nail down if you actually watch it… 
 
The special effects are simple but effective – sometimes a little too effective.  Though there are a couple of instances that are suspiciously bloodless!
 
Further to the film’s merit it has more than enough components to maintain both the plot’s momentum and your interest, so why they felt the need to save unnecessarily long takes of GoPro bike riding, not to mention Joe’s weepy Blair Witch-style confessional bit, from the cutting room floor does perplex.
 
LAST WORDS:
Downhill – a rare beast indeed.