Horror Spot DVD Review - Prowl

Horror Spot DVD Review - Prowl

By Jose

Plot:

Amber dreams of escaping her small town existence and persuades her friends to accompany her to find an apartment in the big city. When their transportation breaks down, she and her friends gratefully accept a ride in the back of a semi. But when the driver refuses to stop and they discover the cargo is hundreds of cartons of blood, they panic. Their panic turns to terror when the truck disgorges them into a dark, abandoned warehouse where blood-thirsty creatures learn to hunt human prey, which, the friends realize, is what they now are...

Cast:

Ruta Gedmintas (Suzy), Joshua Bowman (Peter), Perdita Weeks (Fiona), Jamie Blackley (Ray), Courtney Hope (Amber), Saxon Trainor (Veronica), Bruce Payne (Bernard), Oliver Hawes (Eric)

Review:

Amber (Courtney Hope) is tired of her small town life. Her dreams of escape hinge on an apartment in the big city. But it’s not the only dream she has; she dreams of being chased, falling, covered in mud and being caught. It’s something that haunts her. However, all her dreams are interrupted when the owner of the city apartment tells her he’s going to lease to someone else if she can’t get in immediately to put down the deposit.


After much scrambling, she gets her friends to help her get to the city. On the way, mechanical problems put their transportation out of commission and a passing trucker offers to take them the rest of the way. The journey takes an unexpected turn when the driver takes them to a mysterious warehouse populated with dangerous creatures.

Prowl is an ordinary film that piles flaws upon flaws upon flaws. You have the stereotypically pretty looking cast. You have the best-looking meat counter girl I’ve ever seen in Hope’s Amber. You have her best friend (Ruta Gedmintas) who still hung up on her beefy ex (Joshua Bowman). You have the stoner couple (Jamie Blackley and Perdita Weeks) and the nerdy guy who has a crush on Amber. These are only superficially developed. It’s obvious they are only around to die.


Now if you’re going to have cardboard characters, you should at least try killing them in a way that entertains the audience, but even that is not accomplished. Most of the kills take place off-screen. The few that don’t are only bloody after the fact. Seriously? Prowl can’t even deliver on the kills or characters. A big movie mistake happens when Amber tries to make a call and there is no signal for it to go out. Moments later, Victoria (the big bad played by Saxon Trainor) calls Amber’s cell from one of the victims’ cell phones and the call goes through, revealing where Amber was hiding. Really?

Final Thoughts:

The positives are rare. The cast does a fair job, given what they have to work with. Maybe with a better script or better interpretation of the one they had, there might be more to talk about. Prowl is a jumble of nonsense, predictability, jump-cuts, and jump-scares circled around what could have been a promising premise. The ending fails to deliver and so does the twist revealing Amber’s true origins.

Ratings: 1 out of 5