Straw Dogs (2011)
Summary
Genre: HorrorGoodies:
+ Typical home invasion horror that works well, + Good buildup and tension between charactersBaddies:
- Does not bring anything new to the table in the way of the genre, - Been there, done thatL.A. screenwriter David Sumner relocates with his wife to her hometown in the deep South. There, while tensions build between them, a brewing conflict with locals becomes a threat to them both.
Average. That about sums up how Straw Dogs went down. I am a big fan of Home Invasion films, and I am also a bit fan of horror films having a nice setup plot before this happens (think Last House on the Left or Mother’s Day), but Straw Dogs is what happens when the movie is the setup. The climax came way too late in the film, after I was not really invested in it’s ability to peak. I thought the actual “invasion” was never going to happen, and then when it did, it was over in the blink of an eye. The acting was significantly better than a lot of the films in the genre (but not last house or mother’s day). James Marsden and Kate Bosworth were great (Bosworth especially), and it was very odd to see Alexander Skarsgard in a role outside of Eric Northman (True Blood). Like I said, the film suffered severely from “being average”, it was was I would describe as excruciatingly average (in the vein of I Spit on Your Grave). Overall, it wasn’t a terrible film, just a predictable wash of what has been done before. A few tense moments, and the coach of the football coach was especially a cruel sense of hick. It is hard to recommend the movie when there are so many better versions of the same film!
