Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Amber (Courtney Hope) does not like living in Podunkville Illinois. I think its Illinois. I mean seriously. Imagine the thing you hate most on the planet, then multiply that by a thousand and you get a small inkling of how much Amber hates this place. Amber’s dislike of this place was actually starting to grate on a nerve. Amber wants out. And Amber’s going to get out, but while Chicago was where she was planning to go, she’s going to end up someplace way worse. I know, right? Worse than Chicago? Today’s After Dark Films presentation is ‘Prowl’ and unlike other lower budget independent studios, we hold these guys to higher standard so let’s see how this turned out.

So we know a few things about Amber. Of course we know she despises this town, we know she’s miserable all the damn time, we know she suffers from terrible nightmares where she sees monsters and other horrible things, we know that she can run really fast and we know that she works in meat department of the local supermarket. To aid her getting out of this town she’s made arrangements for an apartment in Chicago but due to a snag in communications, if she doesn’t leave RIGHT NOW, that apartment will go to someone else. I don’t know if we mentioned it or not but Amber hates this place.

So she asks her friends for a ride, but none of them have access to a car for whatever reason except for Eric (Oliver Hawes) who’s kind of sweet on the girl and has a beat up minivan they can take to Chicago. This was shot in Bulgaria, like so many movies, but to the credit of director Patrick Syversen I at least had to look that up as opposed to knowing immediately that this wasn’t ‘Illinois’.

Anyway, the van breaks down. Surprise! Fortunately for our kids a kindly Texas trucker named Bernard stopped by… played by Bruce Payne? So I’m looking at the cast list of this movie and I see Bruce Payne’s name listed and I’m thinking Bruce Payne wasn’t in this movie, what are they talking about? I had no clue while watching

this movie that the small bald trucker with the authentic southern drawl was Bruce Payne. Passenger 57’s Bruce Payne. The man I just saw yesterday playing opposite MC Hammer in the completely terrible ‘One Tough Bastard’. I guess that’s why they call it acting.

So these six kids load up in the back of hauler, like a bunch of idiots, and proceed to ride. These young people apparently really care for Amber. A lot. Too much. Eventually they realize they aren’t headed to Chicago. To their chagrin they are set free in an empty slaughter house. Only it’s not so empty but filled with the leftover vampires from ‘30 Days of Night’ and they are hungry. One by one our kids are getting picked off and devoured with only Amber and her BFF Suzy (Ruta Gedmintas) left to try to survive this night. What’s amazing and completely unbelievable is how Amber is able to navigate this tough terrain of super hungry, super strong vampires with the silly growls. The girl should’ve been dead an hour ago. She really should have.

So we liked this movie ‘Prowl’ a little bit but like most movies we watch we did have some issues. Some these issues worked themselves out however. For instance Courtney Hope’s Amber was one of the more miserable, distasteful final girl applicants we’ve had to deal with in long time. But there was a reason for that so we will casually forget I said anything about that because it worked itself out. Then there was the constant screeching and growling of the vampires, or whatever they were, which was irritating to distraction, but made more so when Amber managed to trap one and interrogated it. We’re not even going to get into how this average girl snagged up and restrained a vampire, but now this vampire is sounding like a Pepperdine grad student. You can stop growling now crazy vampires, we know you possess the gift of speech. A simple ‘we’re gonna get you!’ probably would have worked.

But still, we enjoyed the way the movie progressed. We didn’t have to spend too much time with our kids as they got drunk, played silly games and found they had no cell phone service which meant they didn’t have nearly enough time to get on our nerves. The action was brisk, fast and violent, while awfully low lit which made it hard to see a whole lot, but a lack of light does go a long way to masking economic limitations. Even though we could see rather clearly where the story was going, but we still liked the way it got to its telegraphed destination, no matter how far the setup for this stretched the boundaries of coincidence.

Even though we’d never request any movie to be longer than it already is, this rather brief film felt as if it left more story on the cutting room floor as I felt there were still elements that needed to be told to the audience. I guess that what sequels are for, assuming that this movie is at least marginally successful.

Like we mentioned earlier we do tend to hold After Dark Films to a higher standard, and while ‘Prowl’ might’ve fallen just slightly below that standard, it still had enough going for it that held my interest.