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A class trip
goes horribly wrong when their bus breaks
down in the middle of the forest. They decide to walk
along the river to their destination, but things go
from bad to worse when a masked killer shows up and
starts killing the students off, one by one. Will
anyone survive, or will their blood run in rivers?
This is, to my knowledge, the first slasher flick that
Cambodia has ever produced. I'm probably wrong though
but at least I couldn't find any other Khmer slasher
flicks. And believe it or not, Blood River (I'm not
entirely sure of this translation, the original title
is Jros Dach Proling) is actually the first Khmer
horror film that I've ever seen. So what's the verdict?
Well, heading into this I expected it to be just
awful in every possible way, I mean, Cambodia isn't
exactly a rich country and I didn't even know that
they had cinemas there, but to my surprise, Blood
River actually turned out somewhat watchable.
The story is incredibly plain, though probably for the
best. A bunch of students are going on a field trip
when their bus gets a flat tire in the middle of the
forest. Since there's no one around to help them
out, they decide to hike along the river. It doesn't
take long before a killer in a raincoat shows up and
slashes them one by one. In other words, a very simple
slasher flick with nothing new to offer. But for what
it's worth, Blood River is actually not all that bad.
Though there is nearly no gore at all, the bodycount
is extremely high so there's not a moment of boredom
to be found in here. There's also very little dialogue
which covers up the fact that the acting is pretty
damn atrocious.
While I'm at it, I might as well also say that Cambodia
is a beautiful country and the director has captured
the fantastic scenery brilliantly. Sure enough, Blood
River does look quite low budget, but again, not
nearly as low budget as I had expected it to look.
There are even a couple of scenes where I found myself
rather impressed by the good camerawork. But the praise
stops there. Now it's time to get to the negative
stuff. First of all we have the death scenes which are
all very underwhelming. I mean, the killer has a sickle
but strangles or drowns most of his victims. And the
special effects are so poor that you can easily tell
how they faked each and everyone of the death scenes.
We also have the fact that the story is incredibly
thin. A bunch of students get killed off one by one
by a masked killer - gee, that's original. So ultimately,
Blood River is watchable at best, it's occasionally
amusing and quite beautiful to look at but as a
slasher it doesn't really work. There's no suspense,
there's no gore, there's no nothing really. It's a
very tame horror movie. If you're a hardcore slasher
fan such as myself, you might want to check it out,
but only for extreme slasher fans.
A very fake-looking impalement, some slashed throats
and a couple of stabbings. Very dry.
Again, I was very surprised by how competent this was.
The drums were powerful and crisp and the suspense
music was better than in most American DTV horror
flicks. Unfortunately, a good score can't make a bad
movie good, it can only make a good movie better.
Watchable slasher flick from Cambodia with very little
gore and no originality in it. It's got a very basic
story-line and close to no dialogue at all. Luckily,
it's not very long and the body count is very high so
for those reasons, it never becomes boring. Only for
hardcore slasher fans though.
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