Suburban Nightmare (Jon Keeyes, 2004)

There's a really interesting premise buried somewhere in Suburban Nightmare: a couple who loves to murder (and eat!) people are also having marriage problems. Plus, the movie is more or less in real time, which is a device I usually love in movies. But almost everything else about the movie is wrong, unfortunately. First of all, and this isn't the filmmakers' or the movie's fault, I was lead to believe it was a typical gory horror movie (see those flesh masks on the cover? Yeah, the couple never wears them). But beyond that, the script, while it has its moments, is almost uniformly bad & boring; the actors are bad; the plot twists are visable from a mile away; and everything is just so darn melodramatic as to just be annoying. Not to mention the myriad of unanswered questions at the end - why do they kill people? Why haven't they gotten caught (there's a brief reference to having moved across the country, but that's it)? What's the deal with their daughter (it's kind of discussed at the end, but before that)? Why the hell do they eat people? The juxtaposition of horrific subject matter and the mundanities of everyday married life is a clever one, if done well. It wasn't here. If a more talented writer and crew could get their hands on this material, we could have had a winner; as it stands, this movie leaves me wanting much more than it delivered. 4/10

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