Reeker - An old story, reasonably well done

Nothing new in five American teenagers going on a road trip and falling foul of [insert you monster or redneck family of choice here]. However, every once in a while a film comes along that tells a tried and tested story, but with enough flair to make it just that little bit more memorable.

`Reeker' tells the story of five American teenagers going on a road trip and falling foul of... do you really need to know? If you watch the sort of film where these beautiful kids keep getting killed off by one monster/cannibal after the next, it doesn't matter who's doing the deed, only that it's entertaining. And Reeker is entertaining, just.

First of all, for a low budget flick, the gore is nicely done. There are also some vaguely humorous moments to lighten the mood. Secondly, the killer is nicely done and moves in a genuinely creepy way (possibly a distant cousin of the `Peeper' in Jeepers Creepers).

However, where Reeker falls down is that, although the film may be nice and well done, there's nothing particularly new here - not enough to really set it up as a classic. There's still the old `have sex and die' cliché, plus the "I'll be right back" (and die) cliché, followed by the attempted twist in the tale cliché. And, once the clichés start coming, what charm the film has starts to dwindle.

You'll probably have guessed which characters live and die within the first few minutes of meeting them - they're all pretty stereotypical, so there's not too much in the way of suspension.

Basically, if you like the sound of Reeker (and that type of movie in general), you could certainly do worse than this. I didn't feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching it, but I'm not sure I could be bothered to sit through it again, simply because I have a dozen better versions of this movie in my DVD collection already.

6/10 May just keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights