Smells Like Teen Spirit

Well OK, five twentysomethings, who vaguely know each other, hook up and drive out towards a rave in the desert. They end up getting stuck, with no petrol, at a Diner/Motel in the middle of nowhere. Weirdly, the place is abandoned. Radios just receive static and all phones are dead. Has there been some sort of disaster? What is going on?

It's not long before our characters start seeing and hearing strange things. Glimpses of shadowy figures and mangled dead people! Are they drug induced hallucinations? Maybe. Next they start getting killed one by one, a noxious smell always preceding a gory death.

It's this smell that provides the title for Reeker, a pretty cool low budget horror flick.

My German DVD turned up in the post a few days ago. Normally a new DVD might languish in my 'to watch' pile for months but I'd heard some good things about Reeker so I popped it into my player last night.

Zwischen licht und dunkelheit, nacht und tag, leben und tod

That's right Jürgen!

Reeker begins with a stunning pre-title credits sequence and builds up the mystery and tension for a good first hour. Unfortunately it then trails off towards the end as the plot twist is slowly unraveled and the killer is revealed in too much detail. I think that depending on how you take the twist, whether you know it before watching, figure it out early or not at all, will determine what you think of the film. Some people might hate it others will love it.


For me Reeker is good enjoyable fun that doesn't quite pay off. At times it's a bit derivative of films like Dead End and Identity but it is entertaining (and in my opinion better than Identity). The ever reliable Michael Ironside has a small but important role as an RV driver who appears at the Diner looking for his wife. Other highlights include a badly injured dog, a girl's visit to an outside toilet and the discovery of the not quite dead half of a trucker! A film that is worth checking out if you can stand the smell.