Rage (2010) - Will's Review

NOTE: In honour of Halloween, We're taking a break from the TimeOut 100 Greatest Best Horror Movies.

This month, reviewers have been given a free choice of any horror movie they haven't yet seen.

While parking his car, Dennis inadvertently cuts up a biker. It proves to be a far bigger mistake than he could have guessed.
Starting with childish baiting, and working his way up, the baker spends the day stalking and terrorising Dennis from behind his tinted visor, taking a simple disagreement way beyond road rage, and turning it into a terrifying ordeal.

When reviewing independent movies, I've often said how bad I feel picking on faults; making a movie, any movie, and getting it distributed is a hell of an achievement, so kicking the little guy over a bunch of minor flaws leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

That said, I'm usually quick to point out that while actions scenes and fx shots are expensive, suspense is pretty much free, and that good writing and acting cost no more than their sub-par counterparts.

So I'm delighted to have just sat through a movie that proves this point brilliantly, working within its budget to full effect.

Writer / director Chris Witherspoon, who also dons leathers and helmet as the movie's faceless and nameless maniac, has crafted an excellent movie, which offers no clue that this is his first feature.

The bikers tormenting of Dennis begins as merely annoying, but by the time it reaches a crescendo, it is bleak, and outright harrowing, in a way I really didn't expect it to built to. The similarities to Duel are obvious, and acknowledged (Dennis overhears 2 men discussing the pt of that film, and a look crosses his face which clearly says "oh my god; that's what's happening to me") but Rage is still very definitely its own movie, influenced by Spielberg's classic, but never plagiarising from it.

The biker himself is superbly menacing, the leathers and helmet giving us a faceless, unknowable figure, much like Michael Myers' mask, the featureless helmet gives us no window into the mind of the predator, making him all the more terrifying.

The acting, while at times slightly flat, is for the most part more than good enough, the script builds the tension smoothly but quickly to the point of of terror, and the movie looks fantastic!

In fact, the only 2 moments in the film I have issue with are a brief sequence where the movie becomes a fairly standard slasher as the biker takes a detour to kill two old people, and a flashback that Dennis has to his first encounter with the biker earlier in the movie, which from its position in the movie seems like it's there to clarify or reveal something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.

Those really are piddling minor gripes though, in a movie which really impressed me on its own merits; as a low budget independent movie from an inexperienced crew, it's phenomenal.