Drive Thru (2007)

"Hungry for a killer meal?"

Plot

Horny the clown, the mascot of local fast food joint Hella Burger, begins killing off a group of teenagers in Orange County. At first the teenagers think that the deaths are random but after a while, they begin to suspect that there is something more amiss. They realise that their parents aren't telling them why Horny has targeted them.

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Not being a massive connoisseur of fast food, I could probably count on both hands the amount of times I've been into a fast food restaurant in the past decade. But its hard to avoid them - literally everywhere you look, they're there. On the high streets. In the shopping centres. In the outdoor retail parks. Even the safety of home is scant defence against the onslaught of TV adverts and annoying unskippable YouTube ads. Not to pick on any one multinational brand but it's hard to ignore the global impact of McDonald's. Even more so the iconic mascot Ronald McDonald, as sinister as he is. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to work out Drive Thru's inspiration, with the clown mascot killer,

Despite its decent production values and the look of a bigger budgeted film, Drive Thru is a terrible slasher film which had me tuning out before the first scene had even finished. When you've got a bunch of not-so-tough white actors spouting off incomprehensible hip-hop speak and trying to act like they're from the mean streets, you really don't see the rest of the characters being any better developed. And that is the case indeed. This is one wholly irritating group of characters. They're obnoxious. They're dumb as hell. They're just plain annoying. Dialogue was definitely not high on the list of priorities for the film, giving the characters an infantile nature that really irritated me from the first moments. Drive Thru really tries to be funny and scary at the same time and fails miserably on both counts. The dialogue is filled with one-liners and jokes that the co-directors and writer obviously found funny but no one outside their circle of friends would. Does anyone find cheesy horror film bad guys who fire off quips before dispatching victims even remotely funny anymore? You're more likely to groan and roll your eyeballs than laugh with amusement and this isn't just a problem with Drive Thru, it's a problem with a lot of modern slasher films that try to channel the spirit of Freddy Krueger. He wasn't that funny to begin with and too many slasher films try to make their villains stand out with the same comedic tone.

Thankfully, co-directors Brendan Cowles and Shane Kuhn waste little time in unleashing Horny the Clown and the kills are at least gory, if a little on the predictable side. I was expecting a lot more of the fast-food gimmick seeing as though the premise of a slasher set inside a fast food restaurant does have some novelty appeal. You've got an instant check list of fast food-themed kills which the audience would be familiar with yet none of them are used. Maybe McDonalds threatened to sue in cast it harmed their business! Horny the clown is the best bit of the film bar none though. He has one of the best costumes I've seen for a while for a slasher - the suit looks like something I'd wear for Halloween and his clown face even has a speaker for a mouth so that when he talks, it sounds like the guy who takes your order in the drive-thru. Horny the Clown is unsettling in design, very cartoonish in behaviour, and oddly memorable despite (or because of) the silliness. He feels like a rejected fast-food mascot dragged into a nightmare, which fits Drive Thru's warped logic perfectly.

There's an ironic piece of casting in which Morgan Spurlock, the documentary filmmaker who went on the McDonalds diet in Supersize Me, is cast as the manager of the fast food chain. You'd think that the film would run with this a little more and throw in some jokes but it's a totally wasted opportunity. This fast food angle is merely an opening scene ploy though and Drive Thru shifts into a complete A Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off soon after, complete with a supernatural bad guy who spouts one-liners and a group of teenagers being targeted for the actions of their parents. But this happens away from the drive thru itself.

Leighton Meester has some decent screen presence as the Final Girl and is the least irritating of the bunch of characters offered up to Horny. But it's a tough ask to get her to carry the film on her own. Drive Thru is rough. The acting is wholly uneven, the pacing is messy, and the editing can feel like it’s fighting the audience, very mid-2000 MTV stylised - there's no mistaking the decade in which this was made. Characters are too thinly sketched, often existing just long enough to get slaughtered, and the humour doesn’t always land. When the satire misses, the film risks feeling like it’s taking itself seriously—never a great look for anything which is portraying itself as this absurd. You've lined up a solid gimmick and devised a killer character and then do absolutely nothing worthwhile with it.

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Final Verdict

Really hard to sit through despite the promise of a killer clown, Drive Thru is eighty-three minutes of pure fast food junk. It may look good when you order it, look good when you pick it up but as soon as you take your first bite, you realise you've made a horrible mistake and all you've got left is an ultimately fatty concoction of things that are bad for your health.

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Drive Thru Director(s): Brendan Cowles, Shane Kuhn Writer(s): Brendan Cowles, Shane Kuhn Actor(s): Leighton Meester, Van De La Plante, Nicholas D'Agosto, Melora Hardin, Penn Badgley, Lola Glaudini, Larry Joe Campbell, Morgan Spurlock Duration: 82 mins