Dir: Jonathan Levine
Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) blossomed over the summer and all the high schools boys have noticed. One of the 'cool kids', a jock, invites Mandy Lane to a pool party he is throwing. She agrees to go and brings along her best friend Emmet (Michael Welch) who is an outsider and seen as weird or creepy by the in clique. Later in the night, after Emmett is picked on by the jock, he manages to coerce the jock into jumping from the roof of the house into the in ground pool in order to impress the chaste yet sought after Mandy Lane. The jock's drunken stunt fails spectacularly with the jock smashing his head into the concrete.
The film picks up nine months later as Mandy Lane is now part of the cool kid clique and growing distant from her childhood friendship with Emmet. The pot head of the clique invites a number of the in crowd, including Mandy Lane, to his father's ranch for an alcohol soaked, drug fueled weekend where the males of the group vie to deflower Mandy Lane. Unbeknownst to them there is a deranged stalker also on the ranch who picks off the partying teens one by one.
Though the film was completed in 2006 it has had a scatter shot release history and finally arrived on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. in 2013. This is director Jonathan Levine's first film and he shows a solid hand when it comes to propelling the story (what little there is of it) forward and getting the actors to be where they need to be.The performances are good especially considering the low budget and youthfulness of the cast, and I liked the grainy cinematography. There are plenty of the expected false jump scares but I found it odd that the bloodthirsty killer is revealed early in the film. Perhaps it was set up that way to give greater impact to the 'big reveal'.
Overall the film is an above average slasher. Competently directed, acted and shot but other than Amber Heard there is little to make it stand out.
** 1/2 out of ****
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