• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Featured / Fuse Film Review: “Southbound” — Going Nowhere

Fuse Film Review: “Southbound” — Going Nowhere

February 12, 2016 1 Comment

It’s Twilight Zone eerie, as we embark on an anthology film of connected horror stories all happening on the Lost Highway.

Southbound, directed by Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, and Patrick Horvath. At the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA, February 12 and 13

Going my way? A scene from "Southbound."
Going my way? A scene from “Southbound.”

By Gerald Peary

Southbound starts off as if it’s going to be fun, with a rowdy tongue-in-cheek voiceover obviously emulating Wolfman Jack, the midnight deejay of the George Lucas classic, American Graffiti. “We’re all on the same endless highway with no names and no exits,” the VO growls. “Fuck it! Keep with it,” as the camera comes on to two grim, bloody-faced young men in a car riding through the Southwest desert. Where precisely? Road signs are blank, emptied of their signage, towns have no names and deserted streets, and nobody can get their GPS to work. It’s Twilight Zone eerie, as we embark on an anthology film of connected horror stories all happening on the Lost Highway. The filmmakers are young, B-list indies, and so are the actors; and Southbound is a calling card for their collective talents.

Why are the two blokes all bloody? You have to wait until the end of the film to find out, as Story One loops around. But there’s some creepy looping also up front, as our paranoid protagonists keep frantically driving away but then are mysteriously sucked back to the same diner, Ray’s Motel Café. They should have known right away to stay away when The Night of the Living Dead is playing on the café’s TV. But before these guys can even think of apple pie and coffee, the café seems to be having an earthquake, though not noticed by the regulars. Our heroes ain’t seen nothin’ yet, because outside the café they are attacked from the air by a praying mantis-like critter. Why is not an issue. This giant critter just is.

Story Two concerns three generic babes, the leggy one in hot pants, who wake up with hangovers in Ray’s motel, tucked behind the weirdo diner. They drive off in their minivan which, surprise, breaks down, and an odd married couple coming by rescue them and invite them home. The gals are suspicious, though one makes a wise point: “I’d rather go with them than a bunch of rapey dudes.” Guess what? The couple are part of a witches coven, and two of the babes join in after they’ve eaten a devil’s brew meat stew and puked black stuff. The other is a veggie girl and also The Final Girl of horror movies, though this film (which is starting to drag) is not yet half way.

Story Three is very tedious. A guy in a car runs over the fleeing Final Girl and, ordered about on his Smart Phone by some peculiar folk at 9-1-1, he carries the still-breathing, almost-roadkill lady into his car. He races toward a town which has no citizenry and into a hospital which has neither patients nor staff. For what feels like fifteen minutes, the guy from the car becomes an amateur doctor operating on the Final Girl. This quarter hour is without tension because we don’t care a pinch if the Final Girl makes it or not. We know nothing about her at all. Or about anybody.

Story Four is something about a loony bearded man with a shotgun who has come to this bar in this town to rescue his sister. He’s been searching her out for thirteen obsessive years. His sister, a tattoo artist, doesn’t want to leave. So she feeds him to a bevy of living dead, who appear on the scene suddenly like the giant insect of Story One. As always with this film, there’s not an iota of explanation.

Story Five has the five minutes of Southbound which was actually scary, when a father, mother, and buxom blonde daughter are cornered in their motel room by three masked silent men in masks, one of whom is a rubberfaced grinning Clark Gable. Why this random attack? One of the attackers flashes his victim a photo of a young blonde girl. Oh, that’s the explanation. Of course. Now, time for the kill!

There’s 120 minutes of this lazy, unmotivated stuff. Southbound must have seemed a cool, hip, collaborative idea for fledgling filmmakers. But there’s not much payoff for an audience, and I can’t believe the young actors or directors have advanced their careers with this pointless throwaway.


Gerald Peary is a professor at Suffolk University, Boston, curator of the Boston University Cinematheque, and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi. A critic for the late Boston Phoenix, he is the author of nine books on cinema, writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty, and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess.

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Gerald Peary Filed Under: Featured, Film, Review Tagged: anthology, David Bruckner, horror film, Patrick Horvath, Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, Southbound

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jimmy says

    February 21, 2016 at 5:16 pm

    “There’s 120 minutes of this lazy, unmotivated stuff.” Thats pretty impressive to fit into a 89 minute movie! IMO, a pretty good one at that. Not sure what about it was lazy or unmotivated.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Music Feature: The Tedeschi Trucks Band -- Home for the Holidays The Tedeschi Trucks Band is capping another remarkable... posted on December 1, 2019
  • Concert Review: "The Last Waltz 40 Tour" -- The Best Approximation Possible To hear a 13-piece ensemble of this caliber, doing just... posted on November 12, 2019
  • Concert Review: Tool -- Defying Convention Tool is going to remain relevant as long as the band ca... posted on November 15, 2019
  • Rock Concert Review: Bob Dylan at the Tsongas Center -- Nothing if Not Chameleonic But really, what is a Bob Dylan concert these days if n... posted on November 21, 2019
  • Theater Review: "Come From Away" -- A Heartening Tale of Human Connection Come From Away is more than just a rousing and heart-wa... posted on November 11, 2019

Social

Follow us:

Follow the Conversation

  • Robert Moseley December 8, 2019 at 6:19 pm on Rock Concert Review: ZZ Top/Cheap Trick — Simplicity, and Volume, RulesI saw ZZ Top in Albuquerque at Sandia Amphitheater. I pretty disappointed with the band as they had the bass...
  • Ellie Street December 7, 2019 at 4:00 pm on Rock Concert Review: The Australian Pink Floyd Show — A Very Worthy TributeWhat a load of rubbish!! Save your money! I’ve heard better bands in village pubs! Left as soon as we...
  • Dick Horwich December 6, 2019 at 11:02 pm on Film Review: “Marriage Story” — A Divorce From HellFinished watching this movie an hour ago, and — though we didn’t find its sympathies as unbalanced as you did...
  • Ollie Hallowell December 5, 2019 at 5:51 pm on Critical Commentary: A Few Thoughts about John SimonA critic critiques a critic, so eloquently. Such a pleasure to read such informed and intelligent commentary.
  • William Marx December 5, 2019 at 3:07 pm on Opera Review: Antonio Salieri’s “Tarare” — A Startling Opera of Social CommentarySo Salieri shouldn't have been so jealous of Mozart ...

Donate

Like what you see? Donate to The Arts Fuse today!

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." - Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2019 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz