The Friday Night Fright: Monster Man
Nothing new here - two friends driving the back roads on the way to a wedding piss of a local and spend the rest of the movie being terrorised by him and his monster truck. The opening scene may lead you to think you’re in for some “torture porn” as we witness a man’s head being crushed in a vice but what we have here is a horror comedy, with the emphasis on the comedy.
This is Road Trip meets Roadkill, with the humour on display being of the juvenile and gross out varieties. That’s not to say it isn’t funny, it is, just in a very lowbrow kind of way. Eric Jungmann gets the obligatory nerd role and manages not to be overly annoying while Justin Urich makes the most of the vulgar best friend part that would have suited Kevin Smith to a T had the film been made ten years earlier. Aimee Brooks provides some serious eye candy as a hitchhiker with a touch of mystery about her, and she gives a fair performance too.
The star of the film though is the monster truck, an excellent piece of design work that really does look menacing. It would have been interesting to see how a more serious minded horror film would have made use of it.
Director/writer Michael Davis was the brains behind this year’s Shoot ‘Em Up, a film that deserved to do far better than it did. He’s got a gift for fun but vacuous entertainment and I hope Shoot ‘Em Up’s failure won’t put an end to his career.
