Simply Perfect

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Crap! I just so dislike films where innocent teenagers are being butchered. With all the false scares and bombarding music telling you what to think, I was inclined to hit 'stop' well before the end. The twist ending is just as bad as 'Identity'.

This movie revolves around a mysterious road that works as a shortcut in the middle of a typical US housing suburb. Those who take that route end up disappearing and, as there is a school nearby, there is some local care so that the children don't go there. Being a teen-oriented movie it has a few teenagers in the spotlight but it doesn't have bloody carnage filled with tomato juice, as the vast majority of teen horror movies. This will probably keep away the gore fans, without general public feel any lack of them, or gore itself. The movie tries to build some suspense around the shortcut and what goes on there, and succeeds in that. It doesn't waste time where it shouldn't nor runs over story to get where it wants. The cast isn't particularly sounding but it does what we could expect, though without ever giving us anything else. Nonetheless, the absence of great actors and a more elaborate and and psychological plot make this film something that only serves to spend an hour or two. It's not a bad movie, it's even better than a lot of teen crap! It's pure entertainment... but it's not more than that.

THE SHORTCUT pretty much has a familiar formula but what sets it apart from the other films of it type is that it has a more fleshed out storyline that develops the main characters and the villains as well, its also never really in a hurry to get to the hacking and slashing parts its actually very plot driven and not even too concerned about showcasing a bunch of gore, it even generates a decent amount of suspense and manages to establish an unsettling mood exactly when it needs to.The acting is very good, I don't know any of the cast members or I might not have seen them before and it has fairly likable characters which is something you barely see in these types of films, normally you get a bunch of teens that annoy the living hell out of you you just want to smash your DVD player in two because the killer is taking to long to kill them.Overall, out of many of the recent horror fair I've seen THE SHORTCUT probably has the lowest body count and is the least gore driven but at the same time its also one of the better horror films I've seen, it has an ending that sucks but that's normal for most better than average horror films.

I was looking forward to this movie and it started out quite good: An old legend, flashbacks, a possible love triangle, Seeley as a likable lead, etc.BUT...and this is a pretty big 'but'...the first 65 minutes felt like a detective movie for kids...you know, something you watch on a Sunday afternoon where some kids are spying on a creepy old man.Even though we get the psycho kid and the dead dog pretty early...that's about it. NOTHING HAPPENS! We see the kids at school, at work and a stupid blonde that plays football like a little princess who is afraid to get dirty..(seriously, they just could have made her a cheerleader, that would have been more believable). There was a whole lot about that girl that didn't even make sense: Why bring up that she wants to go to an Ivy League university and point out that she isn't taken seriously by the headmaster when it isn't further explained to add depth to her character? Why bring up her boyfriend when we never see him? Why put her on the movie poster when her role was so unimportant? They should have put Taylor on there...at least he had more on-screen time. Other than that we don't really know anything about the characters in this movie, there is no development, no emotional depth...nothing!Well okay, where was I? The plot! From the moment you see psycho kid's brother in one of the flashbacks you know that he is the creepy old man cleaning up the mess behind his deranged little brother. There is no suspense...you just know the whole 'plot twist' after 20 minutes.And the end, oh my god i don't even know where to start!As if to make up for all the time nothing happened, suddenly EVERYTHING happens: the kids free psycho-man and he kills them (the two boys literally within seconds!!! They die like some unimportant extras). I mean, maybe it was supposed to be the big finale but that's just not how you build suspense in a horror movie. I actually thought for a while that no one was going to die because everything felt too harmless and than THIS.Well and than the END...this was next to psycho brother's 'goodbye' speech (3 minutes ago he wanted to shoot the kids and then: "i can't do this anymore...i love you") the most ridiculous part of all: Derek's little brother shows up and is a psycho, too. TADAAA! Once again, you knew this was gonna happen because Lisa was mean to him, the hints about 'trouble at his old school' and the way he played the video game. When they continued the movie with Derek and Lisa walking through the woods, you knew that the new little psycho would show up and kill her for what she had said before. And Derek? He screams "No, Lisa, no!" and then turns into a psycho himself. Just like that...without further explanation. And don't give me that "He wants to protect his little brother crap and he isn't really a bad guy" because he just doesn't care about the fact that the little freak just killed his friend. There is no deeper dramatic side to this. You just have A LOT of psychos. This movie was disturbing...but not in a good way that horror flicks sometimes are. It doesn't make you think. You rather feel the need to complain because they screwed it up so badly in the end.I still think it's interesting that Mr.Sandler is now making Horror flicks ...maybe the next one is going to be better! I sure hope so!