For a little while, Hayride seemed like it could be heading into pleasant surprise territory. It's a low budget but okay-looking indie film (there are aspects of it that look very polished and professional, and parts that are amateurish), and it's got a charming cast and decent dialogue that could make it rise above the generic slasher pack. Unfortunately, Hayride doesn't deliver the promised horror goods and ultimately falls flat. (And yeah, a movie never "promises" anything, but when you say "A New Breed of Chainsaw Massacre" on the front - I think you owe the audience *something*.) And there are kills here - they are just really, really lame.
Abbreviated story? Sack-masked man kills people at a hayride.
The longer version starts with a convenient newscast telling us the story of a crazed murder named Guffin - he's just been apprehended after murdering a dozen young women. Unfortunately, while he's being transported from prison, the driver crashes and Guffin runs off into the woods (kind of weak excuse for for an escape, but whatever). This kicks off a surprisingly well-equipped manhunt (as far as low budget horror goes) led by Detective Loomis (where'd they get that?), who teams up with a local cop in a genuinely kind of funny odd couple pairing. It's right around Halloween, hence the titular hayride. And the killer makes it to said hayride and has a good time riding it and drinking cider. Just kidding - he kills people there.
Our main characters are Steven (Jeremy Ivy) and his girlfriend Amanda (Sherri Eakin). Steven is taking Amanda to his sweet home Alabama for the first time on a break from college. They're going home for the "holiday" to partake in the family hayride. His take on Alabama: "you spend half your time pretending you're not from [there], and the other half pretending you don't miss it." Amanda is not from the South and expects a little culture shock. And these early parts of the film mostly work - it's actually kind of fun getting to know these two and it's pretty well-written. Steven explains his uncle's haunted hayride business and all of the crazy stories he'd make up to populate the cast of it. My favorite? Rawhead Bloody Bones, who only comes out when it's windy. (That one still brings a smile to my face.) Another story - one uncle Morgan may or may not have made up, is about the town legend of "Pitchfork." Pitchfork was a local farmer from several decades ago (if the really terrible flashback effects are any indication) who was a very strict parent. His daughter runs off with some guy from town, which causes Pitchfork to snap. Not only does he brutally murder his wife, but since he doesn't know *who* his daughter ran off with, he just kills a bunch of random people in town with his pitchfork... he was never caught, and "on nights like tonight" people say you can still see him wandering about the woods, looking for his revenge.
And then, the next night, shit goes down on the hayride. People start to get killed, mostly offscreen.
And that's the big problem with Hayride. Not only does it take a long time for the bulk of the slashing action to start, once it finally does the kills are just weak. This is the kind of movie that sinks or swims based on the kills, and it's honestly like writer-director Terron R. Parsons didn't even try. There are a couple of times where you just kind of have to assume that sack-mask killed someone, because you don't even get the standard offscreen splash of blood. And what is onscreen is either poorly shot/edited or poorly lit, so you don't really even see what happens.
It's too bad - because like I said, otherwise Hayride has the stuff to be pleasant enough diversion. The characters are pretty well fleshed out, the score is above average, there are some clever lines in the script, and *some* of the production values are impressive. The acting is pretty okay too - it's the rare time I was kind of wishing it was a drama/comedy instead of the lazy slasher it eventually becomes.
Steven says early on in the film (re: the hayride): "People don't come to these things to learn some lesson on life or hear a compelling story... they are here to be scared." I thought this was a tongue in cheek way for Parsons acknowledge that the story that is about to unfold may be weak, but at least you'll get some solid horror. Unfortunately that does not end up being the case.
I decided to watch this because I want to do some more VOD movies for the blog, and Hayride 2 comes out later this week. I'm hoping that Parsons can fix what went wrong (the bad slasher action), because in Hayride he did a lot of things right. Just not the most important thing.
I would not recommend this film.
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