3/5 Great 80's slasher style movie
  by J. Cook (Buffalo)

Six friends enter the strange town of Old Mines for a weekend float trip. They quickly realize that the town is not friendly to strangers, and they are pressured to leave by the police. When the friends decide to continue their float trip anyway, terrifying secrets of the town surface. The town's mayor has an evil secret-- a 7' deformed son born out of incest, and kept under lock and key. Simply known as "The Boy", he is used as a weapon against unwanted visitors to the city, killing them off when needed. When "The Boy" turns on his father, and the town's people for the years of torment, he does what he knows best and heads for the woods to kill the interlopers.

The Undertow was a great homage to the 1980's backwoods slasher genre. The killer "The Boy" was in a way a carbon copy of Jason Voorhees in Friday The 13th Part 2, with a hint of Humongous. That I liked a lot. I have always thought the sack-headed killer was really creepy and very well done in Friday The 13th Part 2, The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Malevolence. The blood and gore in the movie was great, and very well done for a Sub Rosa Studios movie. Lastly, other than his mask, the killer was very intimidating. Huge. That was a solid plus for the movie, and actually making the movie work.

With typical Sub Rosa Studios acting, and bad dialogue. The long drawn out scenes of screaming got old, and gave me a headache. The acting in some cases took a lot away from the movie, and made me want to fast forward. But, getting past that (which was pretty hard at times), the movie was still redeeming.

I heard about this movie through another review (DeadPit.com) and figured it was a movie I would love to see. After popping it in and watching it, it slowly started off as a typical Sub Rosa movie, with the same ole' black Jeep Cherokee full of the same Sub Rosa actors, and I quietly sighed. The movie got going about 15 minutes in, and become really interesting. The location (the small town) was great, and very Friday The 13th-ish. I loved that, and then the killer. Another thing that helped the movie roll easily. Once the movie got going, it felt the remainder went by really fast. The movie had pretty much everything a 1980's slasher had, everything but the budget. I would really recommend any slasher fan to give this movie a try. It's really one you're going to either love or loathe, you have to at least give the makers credit for actually writing a unique story in a very over-saturated, no longer unique genre.



4/5 Great campfire story...
  by Sid Stirling (Detroit, MI USA)
Jeremy Wallace and Eric Stanze put together a great campfire story in this movie. There are many parts in this movie that gave me the chills. The ensemble cast gave great performances. To go with all the chilling moments there is a lot of blood splattered all over the place created by the running amok of "The Boy" frighteningly played by Doc Brown (Great name). Highly recommended!

1/5 Another dissapointment from Sub-Rosa Studios
  by Jose Angeles (Chazzwuzzles USA)
In this movie you have the same Sub-Rosa patented bad actors yelling at each other, repeating the same words over and over, to get the dull background story out of the way. Then comes the formulaic killer's ramapage sequences in the end. Now this I wouldn't have a problem with if the kills were actually delivered right. There was no tension in the chase scenes. It was a mess showing who's running from who and where. Fake blood is just dabbed on people (they don't have cuts) and the killer hardly even touches them. It's like he just gives taps. Were they even trying to make it look brutal? There's one scene where he rips one guy's guts out, but it was like he was pulling a post-it note off his stomach. I was annoyed mostly by the long gratuitous gore close-ups where the camera just records a dead body on the floor for a couple minutes. It's as if the movie was an excuse to show off cheap make-up effects. If I wanted to stare at organs I'll stand inside a butcher shop. I prefer seeing gore in action instead of just staring at the useless remains. The movie was a waste of time.

4/5 The Undertow
  by Alex Anderson (Baltimore, MD)
A classic-style horror flick with incredible amounts of gore.
Unwanted visitors of a small town find themselves stuck in a horrible massacre. A deranged sheriff trains an inbreed freak to destroy any outsiders that attempt to stay.
Intense thriller with non-stop action and no mercy violence. Best independent movie cast I have seen in a long time: Emily Haack (SCRAPBOOK), Jason Christ (ICE FROM THE SUN), Chris Grega (INSANIAC), Robin Garrels (INSANIAC), and Todd Tevlin (ICE FROM THE SUN). Outstanding Cinema photography by Eric Stanze (director of SCRAPBOOK, ICE FROM THE SUN, SAVAGE HARVEST, and the upcoming DEADWOOD PARK).

5/5 Great indie horror!!!!
  by mizziah (A viewer from nowhere)
I wasn't really expecting much from this one, but I can honestly say that this was one of the best independent horror films that I've seen in a long time!!!!

The story's nothing really groundbreaking, but it's the way director Jeremy Wallace and crew pulls this movie off that's so refreshing. What I appreciate the most about the movie is that it's very straight forward and serious in its handling of the horror elements of the story (unlike that crappy Cabin Fever flick), which is something you rarely see in horror films these days. The film is very much in the vain of the great 70's horror flicks like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. Like those films, the story is simple in nature, and yet it delivers a wonderful sense of dread and tension with a brutal dose of well-executed gore!!!

I've seen Wallace's first flick, The Christmas Season Massacre, and while I thought that movie was good for what it was (horror spoof), he really took a major step forward as a director with this flick (he even wrote the simple, yet extremely effective score for the film). Wallace's confident direction is aided by some fantastic editing and cinematography by Eric Stanze (director of Ice From The Sun and Scrapbook) and a cast that's way above average for a movie of this budget level, who all turn in great performances (especially Trudy Bequette and Julie Farrar).

Horror fans should definitely check this baby out! Like I said, it's nothing original, but it definitely delivers what it promises, which is more than I can say for most of the stuff coming out of Hollywood these days!