When you’re a reviewer, sometimes it’s difficult to formulate your own opinion. Was the movie great or did it suck? Sometimes the more you think about the movie, the more your opinion will change. When it comes to sharing what I thought about a specific film, I find that the more I have to say, the better the overall viewing experience went. Now, I wasn’t expecting much from The Raking. I was reeled in by a pretty movie poster, but when I saw that it was being distributed by Brain Damage Films, my thoughts immediately went to the dark side. Brain Damage Films isn’t known for its quality content. Luckily, The Raking surprised me and was unexpectedly better than I predicted.
Aside from the movie poster, I was lured into renting The Raking on Amazon Instant Video because it shares a similarity with my real life. The film follows five college students who head out to the woods (more like desert) to debunk the urban legend of The Joshua Tree – a seemingly supernatural tree with several sub-myths and a ferocious otherworldly protector. I live in New Jersey and we have this thing called The Devil’s Tree, which is basically the same thing except it’s guarded by remaining members of the KKK. I’ve had many nights where I drove out to the middle of the woods with my friends to see if we could push fate the same way as they did in The Raking. Obviously, my adventures were less interesting as I wasn’t torn to pieces by an alien looking creature.
There are a lot of things I liked about The Raking, but let me start with what I didn’t like. There are far too many cliches even by horror film standards. While most characters experience some level of personal or emotional growth – a rarity in films such as this – they were all the basic stereotype characters that you find in every other movie. The hot blonde, the goth girl, the nerd, the boy next door… I’d love to find an independent movie with realistic people instead of copy and paste characters. These characters spend way too much time talking and I suspect that’s to make up for a lack of budget. Despite the film having a fantastic opening, stunt work included, the rest of the movie is definitely under budgetary constraints. Also, at points the dialogue didn’t match up with the mouths, but I’m not sure if that was due to me streaming it and not watching on a disc.
Here’s what I did like. I enjoyed that the film used practical effects minus one gore effect at the end of the movie that was CGI. The entire monster suit was made from “Face Off” looking prosthetics and that was really impressive. I guess I’m glad The Raking was an independent adventure because this allowed them to tackle their departments in more realistic and fun ways. I could give the monster suit an A+ in terms of design. I enjoyed the bloody massacre the movie became once the creature started attacking the college students and their random saviors. The culmination of events and development of backstories are worth the wait for the bloody good ending of the movie. And while the characters were archtypes, the performances the actors pulled in for each and every one of them were slightly above average. The whole movie just had a homey, old school vibe to it and I can’t hate on that too much.
The Raking isn’t going to win awards or show up on any end of the year lists, but it’s a solid directorial debut that showcases the promise from a new horror creator. As with every aspect of the entire movie, The Raking is slightly above average as far as independent horror standards go. It was written, directed and produced by Bryan Brewer. He also stars alongside Cree Kelly, Allie Rivera, Thatcher Robinson, Marshal Hilton (“Beetleborgs”), Marisa Davila, Alan Mxson, Peyton McDavitt (“The Young and The Restless”), Chandler Rylko and Brock Brenner. Final Score: 6 out of 10.
