大象传媒

A naked teenage boy covered in blood stumbles into the Sheriff's office of a small town, carrying a hunting knife used in the brutal killing of a local girl 12 months earlier. For Sheriff Jack Shepard (Timothy V Murphy), the boy is a harbinger of his own dark past and the murder he failed to prevent. From this startling beginning, Sheldon Wilson's bleak, low budget horror weaves a complicated tale of supernatural shenanigans that eventually collapses into absurd baloney.

The trouble with scary stories is this: once you know who or what the boogeyman actually is, they ain't so scary any more. Clearly wise to this rule, Shallow Ground spends much of its running time wallowing in ambiguities: is there really a killer in the woods? Does the gore-soaked teenager have supernatural powers? How does he produce blood, apparently at will, that can run up walls and spell scary messages? And why don't these numb-brained sheriffs just call up the state police and get the hell out of there?

"STARTS OUT UNSETTLING"

Consequently, Shallow Ground is a film that starts out in the territory of the unsettling, takes a brief detour into the land of downright scary, has a long ramble through the cornfields of confusion and finally parks itself at the theme park of the ridiculous. The unknown actors trudge gamely through a script that requires them to behave like simpletons, and there are some inventively bloody effects to make up for all the head-scratching you'll be doing in the first half.