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Lake Dead (2007)
Lake Dumb
Directed By: George Bessudo
Starring: Kelsey Crane, Jim Devoti, Kelsey Wedeen, & Tara Gerard
MPAA Rating: “Unrated”
This is the second film I have seen from the After Dark Horror Fest 2007. This festival is also called “8 Films to Die For,” but I have yet to see a film that is to die for...or even good. Crazy Eights was not a good film by any means, but Lake Dead takes badness to a whole new level. Here is a film with the production values of a soft-core porn film except with even more hollow characters and dumber dialog. Lake Dead is perhaps one of the worst films I have seen and yet it is never bad in a fun way...instead, it is just bad in a really bad way. The plot is a mish-mash of rape, murder, and incest...but it is all handled in such a pathetic way that any disturbing imagery that the film may have had is wasted.
Brielle (Crane) and Kelly (Wedeen) Lake are sisters who have just inherited a lakeside motel from the deceased grandfather they never knew they had. Against their father’s wishes, they take a few of their friends, including Brielle’s boyfriend Ben (Devoti), to visit the motel to decide whether or not they want to sell it. In a decision that makes very little sense, they decide to stay in a camper, not in the motel...not that this really proves to make a difference, but one would think it does with the amount of emphasis put on the camper (Why not just take an SUV?). Anyway, two inbred maniacs begin to kill off the hapless friends, all so that they can breed with the two Lake sisters in order to maintain the pure Lake blood. Wait...what?
Lake Dead is the kind of film that really makes no sense. Why would these people stay in a camper? Why would they take all of their friends for what should really be a business weekend? Why does the grandmother care so much about maintaining pure Lake blood? If incest has been in the family for generations, why are only two of them completely physically deranged? Wouldn’t each generation show a progressive form of disfigurement? I don’t really know the answers to any of these questions, but neither do the filmmakers...and I’m not the one making the movie so it doesn’t matter if I know these answers. The film, however, has even worse problems than its lapses in logic. It is just a downright ugly film aesthetically. Everything looks recycled, like the filmmakers snagged it for half-price from some other bad movie.
I wish I could say that Lake Dead had at least a few moments of creative gore, but it does not even have that. There are a few scenes that reminded me of Prom Night (2008) because they seem to have a deliberate lack of blood. For example, we see one of the inbred psychopaths raise a meat cleaver above a woman’s head and, when he slams it down off-screen, a tiny squirt of blood hits him in the face. If you cannot afford a full bag of fake blood for a scene such as this, just don’t use blood at all. The film is filled with scenes such as these, with even the main villain being shot off-screen and then shown later with a hole in his head sprinkled with light blood. What in the world is happening here? Lake Dead is just a distinctly atrocious film that has very few redeeming factors, if any. It’s dumb, ugly, and very pathetic.
Brielle (Crane) and Kelly (Wedeen) Lake are sisters who have just inherited a lakeside motel from the deceased grandfather they never knew they had. Against their father’s wishes, they take a few of their friends, including Brielle’s boyfriend Ben (Devoti), to visit the motel to decide whether or not they want to sell it. In a decision that makes very little sense, they decide to stay in a camper, not in the motel...not that this really proves to make a difference, but one would think it does with the amount of emphasis put on the camper (Why not just take an SUV?). Anyway, two inbred maniacs begin to kill off the hapless friends, all so that they can breed with the two Lake sisters in order to maintain the pure Lake blood. Wait...what?
Lake Dead is the kind of film that really makes no sense. Why would these people stay in a camper? Why would they take all of their friends for what should really be a business weekend? Why does the grandmother care so much about maintaining pure Lake blood? If incest has been in the family for generations, why are only two of them completely physically deranged? Wouldn’t each generation show a progressive form of disfigurement? I don’t really know the answers to any of these questions, but neither do the filmmakers...and I’m not the one making the movie so it doesn’t matter if I know these answers. The film, however, has even worse problems than its lapses in logic. It is just a downright ugly film aesthetically. Everything looks recycled, like the filmmakers snagged it for half-price from some other bad movie.
I wish I could say that Lake Dead had at least a few moments of creative gore, but it does not even have that. There are a few scenes that reminded me of Prom Night (2008) because they seem to have a deliberate lack of blood. For example, we see one of the inbred psychopaths raise a meat cleaver above a woman’s head and, when he slams it down off-screen, a tiny squirt of blood hits him in the face. If you cannot afford a full bag of fake blood for a scene such as this, just don’t use blood at all. The film is filled with scenes such as these, with even the main villain being shot off-screen and then shown later with a hole in his head sprinkled with light blood. What in the world is happening here? Lake Dead is just a distinctly atrocious film that has very few redeeming factors, if any. It’s dumb, ugly, and very pathetic.
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