Freakdog/Red Mist (2008)

What it's about: After a night of illegal revelry goes horribly awry, a group of medical students are left at the mercy of the young man they put into a coma - and the one who's unknowingly helping him.

Review: From the director who brought us Shrooms comes this little attempt at a horror story, which is basically I Know What You Did Last Summer meets a backward version of Freddy Krueger. It's neither original nor scary, but I found myself entertained all the same. It's a shame that they locked Andrew Lee Potts away so early on in the film - he's a fantastic actor, and his character edged so wonderfully on absolutely creepy that it was much more interesting having him on screen than any of the other stereotypical canon fodder. But, alas, every slasher-wanna-be has to have their quirk, and this particular one combines elements of J-horror with the kill every sexy American coed on screen elements of straight to video slaughterfests.

Even Andrew was a bit miffed about what happened to his character.

I've personally never been to med school, but the way this film slates it, you would think every institution has a status quo to meet: at least in this film, every character type is filled adequately. You've got your bad boy who steals from the pharmacy, you've got your slut/party girl, the book nerd, the goth chick, the good boy, and the good girl. From this not really potentially volatile mix of personalities stems a night gone so wrong that someone's trachea almost got slashed open. Sean, the bad boy, fakes a prescription to get drugs out of the school pharmacy, bringing them to a a bar that another student works part time at. They shut it down for their own personal party, but who should crash it but the weird Kenneth (Andrew Lee Potts). Obsessed with Catherine, the good girl who has bright, shiny dreams of being the doctor with the huge heart, Kenneth blackmails the group by saying he has video evidence of Sean getting the pills. He even goes so far as to show them, and Sean can't let him walk away after that.

The shenanigans land Kenneth in a coma, strapped to a bed with no one to claim him. Catherine, feeling ultimately guilty about the whole thing, endeavors to find some way to cure him of his condition, and in doing so relieving herself of accepting that they have done anything wrong. Using an experimental drug that supposedly stimulates a certain section of the brain, she sneaks in after hours and does her own manipulation in order to put this highly dangerous and untested mix of chemicals into a guy she's already put into a coma. Maybe I've been looking at this from the wrong angle - the killer is obviously Catherine, but that's another theory for another time. The drug works, but not in the fashion that Catherine anticipates. Kenneth is eventually let loose in the world again, but only through astral projection. He uses this part of his brain to possess others and one by one, kill those who hurt him.

And of course, little by little we get flashbacks of Kenneth's past, some explanation as to why he's the fucked up individual that he is. It stands to reason that he was mostly harmless before the accident, so screwed over by the events that twisted him that he's simply more of a threat to himself than to others (though the first scene in the film might say otherwise - though I've never heard of a case of necrophilia that hurt anyone other than the corpse). It's definitely an interesting idea to see each cast member have to act like Kenneth, picking up his tell-tale slouch, walk, and manner of speech, but for some reason no one picks up on this oddity until after they're tied up, stabbed, or run over by a car. Even Catherine isn't safe from this astral menace, which proves to be her undoing in the end. Unfortunately, that novelty isn't really enough to keep the film afloat. Though some of the deaths are intriguing, it's all things we've seen before.

So in the end, Freakdog (which is the name they should have kept - Kenneth repeats it so often, you won't soon be forgetting it) is a carbon copy of everything that a bunch of other films did well, putting them into a blender with the hopes of getting some grade A material. It's all old hat. Eventually, after everyone is picked off, Catherine is left to either get the authorities to understand what's happened, or take Kenneth out herself. I am happy to say that they took the more believable path. I'd recommend this film for when there's absolutely nothing else on - it's not the worst of the lot, but it really doesn't reach very far over mediocre.