A Classic Horror Story - Not that classic

I was really diving deep through an online streaming service's list of horror films.  I've pretty much watched (and forgotten) most of them, so I came across this one.  It's a low budget Italian film (you can watch the dubbed English version if you like) where five strangers share a ride in a camper van across country... with disastrous consequences, as they say.

With a title like 'A Classic Horror Story' I wasn't sure what I was getting.  I remember 'Cabin in the Woods' was deliberately marketed as 'the same old horror story (but with a twist!)' and deliberately subverted expectation in a good way.  Naturally, our heroes (who I can't remember any of their names, but one was British, one was fat and one was old, so they're all just about visually different enough for you to pick out when they start dropping like flies) run into trouble (no spoilers here, but you know the type) when the camper van crashes and they have to fight for their lives.

So far, so samey.  By about the hour mark I was wondering whether the title should simply be taken literally and this was deliberately trying to copy pretty much every similar movie in the genre.  And that's how it kind of went on.  The the final act started.  Now, I'm not classing 'the final act' as the final third, I'm talking roughly the last twenty minutes.  That's when you actually found out what was really going on.

It was then when the title kind of made more sense.  I got what they were going for and it was a nice enough touch.  However, this brings me to the phrase 'too little too late.' Yes, the ending was different enough to just about be memorable, but that doesn't make up for the fact that by then you've spent over an hour watching what could be any other film in the horror catalogue.

So, if you can stick with it until the end, you should feel happy about the pay-off.  Otherwise you've basically seen everything this film has to offer - and probably done better.  Unless you're really that desperate to watch a slasher-style film that's set in Italy.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights