Movie: Cry Wolf (2005).

Considering the movie’s tagline: “You lie… You die!” I’ll come clean. My love of bad horror wasn’t the only reason I decided to watch this movie. I’ve also had this curiosity about the actor, Jared Padalecki, who I enjoy so much in the TV show Supernatural, and I wanted to see what else he could do. Unfortunately, this movie does nothing to showcase his acting ability.

I really wanted to like this movie as a bad horror movie, but unfortunately it’s not a good example of an admittedly dodgy genre. While it has a few redeeming qualities, they’re not nearly enough to make up for the rest of it.

Since this movie relies heavily on an attempt to keep the audience guessing, I’ll try to avoid anything spoilery in the summary: a bunch of kids at a boarding school decide to use a local murder as inspiration for a rumor about a serial killer. The story goes viral, and as lies cover lies, the newcomer, Owen (Julian Morris) becomes convinced the story is coming true.

Don’t be fooled by the simple premise. It sounds like the standard horror plot, but it had potential to be something more. Initially, I expected to feel some sense of detective drama, but the awful script and acting gave it away immediately.

Had the movie omitted a few twists, it might have avoided some of this, but the convoluted plot makes no sense by the end, and the movie’s attempt to shock leaves only a sense of incredulity at the absurdness. Is this really what they think of their audience? I found myself thinking. Clearly, we’re expected to accept all the revelations simply because they’re really unpredictable and therefore interesting, but the only problem is that we never thought of those scenarios because they were too absurd. Or, if you’re like me, you predicted it all because you realized from the get go what this movie was trying to do. Either way, it makes for a boring movie.

I mentioned redeeming qualities, and they lie solely with the editing and directing. If only they had upped the gore factor and fired the writers, this might have made a decent movie. As it stands, the only reason I kept watching to the end was a desire to look at Julian Morris’ pretty face. He has the “shocked and appalled” look down at least.

I want so bad to give this a 2, but that would just be too generous. I hope Jared Padalecki finds something more interesting to do the next time he takes a break from Supernatural.

Dice roll: 1