Caretaker

The Caretaker (2010 MTI Home Video)

It's the high school homecoming dance. And it's on Halloween! The perfect mix of annoying stereotypical underage characters that you just can't wait to see gutted, and that uncomfortable feeling wondering if they're still going to show their tits in the prerequisite teen-slasher fashion.

(And we do see some tits. The ditsy blond in the Belgian beer-girl outfit gets a nomination for best use of props and screen lighting with two flashlights and her "boob-o-lanterns." Thumbs up.)

The guys have a great idea- bring their dates to an abandoned spooky house, tell them scary stories, and have a few friends in on the joke make noises outside the house to add to the spookiness. So they tell the story of... the Caretaker.

The Caretaker begins as a legend of some farmer in a grapefruit orchard who grew so jealous of his wife's beauty he chained her up inside, boarded all of the windows, and starting killing anyone who might have possibly looked at her. (Well, 16 years ago is a legend when you're a high school student in a slasher film. That's like... ancient history.)

So, ok. We've got a setup. We've got a bunch of annoying characters together in the creepy-guy's house. And he's got a pretty unique instrument of death. With all the chainsaws and axes and other farm equipment that have been used, I think the Caretaker is the first that has thought to use a sharpened fruit picker. The tool used on the end of a long stick to grab and yank fruit off a tree does make for a pretty intimidating looking polearm in the stills.

That's where everything really goes downhill, though. Every character gets killed the same way- a grapefruit gets rolled towards the victim to get their attention, then they get thwacked by the killing stick. All of the kills are off-screen, which is a disappointment in a slasher film, especially when you want to see the characters die. The pacing between kills is quite slow as they get the back-story out of the way, with the space in between filled with locker-room humor and fart jokes. (Which, again.. with the ages the characters are supposed to be, this is appropriate... just stupid.)

Overall it was a slow film that didn't take more than a step in any direction away from the theme. There were a few great characters in the mix, though. The driver of the rented limo spent most of his time on screen trying to get the youngest of the girls to sit on his lap in a wonderfully convincing pervy kind of way. One of the kid's teachers also contributes when she molests one of the students as she wants to be caught on film having sex with an underage student so she can become famous- even having plans on the very short if any prison term and the follow-up tell-all book. She was easily one of the best characters.

The film has a twist ending as to the identity of the killer, of course... I think these are required now. (And a moment of cleverness minutes from the end where one of the girls finds a lost earring...) But the twist explains the motives of the killer, which makes the opening kill make no sense. Whatever... you're not supposed to think about these things too much.

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reviewed by Jeremy Gaggins