Plot
At a desert gas station and diner, a group of criminals
who have just robbed a casino and taken some hostages run into a retiring
sheriff and his deputy son and a gun fight ensues. But soon after, the
criminals, the cops and the other people caught up in the shoot-out realise
that there is something terribly wrong as people who should be dead are not
and all contact with the outside world is lost. They are in a fight for
their lives as the mysterious creature known as the Reeker comes calling.
Review
A prequel that is a virtually a
remake, No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker treads exactly the same
ground as the first one. If you've seen the first Reeker, then you'll
know what the big twist is at the end. Given the nature of the Reeker
creature and why it exists, then you'll know exactly that the same thing
will happen in this one. So a lot of the surprise element has gone and
unfortunately this makes the whole affair very lacklustre and predictable.
We know the "rules" of the Reeker and the world between life and death that
it inhabits so we know how the characters need to play the game to survive.
Having said
that, if you haven't seen the original then you'll have no idea what is
going on. Even so, don't bother with this one, track the original down
either way. It may be just as shamefully derivative of other films but at
least it's a bit better than this one.
No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker
is essentially the same film but just set in a slightly different location
(still a remote place in the middle of nowhere) with different characters.
It's written, directed and produced by David Payne who did the same jobs on
the original. Someone forgot to tell him that lightning doesn't strike twice
and he can't just make the same film again without someone realising! The
Reeker is given some back story here with an opening scene which explains
how the creature came to be. I thought it worked a lot better when you
didn't know what the crack with it was. Now I know what happened to it and
that it was previously human, a lot of it's menace and eeriness was lost. I
don't know why people find it necessary to explain everything and give all
of these cinematic monsters some back story. Sometimes our imagination can
be more powerful. The creature itself is still well-designed, pretty damned
awesome in fact and one of the glaring problems here is that it's not on the
screen for long enough. The tools-for-hands it uses as weapons are great and
this time there's even a flame thrower implement to be used! There's some
attempted gore effects with caved-in heads, half a body running around, a
dead bird flying past the camera (arguably the film's funniest shot) and
more but due to the shoddy CGI, these splatter moments look poor. Whatever
happened to corn syrup and fake body parts? It was always much more
realistic. A few of the set pieces are entertaining in their ingenuity -
unfortunately some of the characters realise that there is an invisible
field surrounding their current location a little too late and end up a
little more damaged than they would like.
But these are characters we don't really care about. The
teenagers in the original weren't great but Tina Illman made for a sweet and
sympathetic leading lady and Devon Gummersall managed to eek out some pity
with his blind character. Here the characters are terrible and the acting
isn't much better. I nearly choked on my beer when the sheriff said it was
his last day and that he was retiring - dear me will this poor guy make it
out of the film alive? To make matters worse, he has a strained relationship
with his son who is going to be taking over. Too much time is spent wasted
on secondary characters who don't serve any purpose to the film. Having said
that, not many of the characters do serve a purpose other than to be served
up on a smorgasbord to the Reeker. The cast is rounded off by a bunch of
hopeless bit part players who no doubt will be appearing as non-speaking
extras sometime soon. It's unfortunate that they have so little to work with
though as the script doesn't set the world alight. It's hard to get into a
film when you know what is coming at the end and I guess that's how everyone
in the cast felt judging by their performances.
Verdict
The first one was decent and I enjoyed it. Making a
prequel with exactly the same story and exactly the same twist is one of the
most pointless things I've seen. No Man's Land: The
Rise of Reeker is alright if you haven't seen the first one. But if you
have, then get the air freshener out and eliminate the foul stench emanating
from this bad boy.
