Pulpmovies Reviews

Silo Killer certainly has its ups and downs; most significantly on the up side is a creepily frightening ending that puts most other slasher films to shame. It’s a pity that the filmmakers carried on for another minute or so to tie up a loose end that would really have been better dealt with earlier.

The title sequence involves a young woman being chased, at night, through a garden maze by an unseen attacker. Eventually escaping the maze, she reaches a house and starts hammering on the door, seeking help, only to be killed on the welcome mat.

Then we’re past the credits and into the film itself and the, admittedly very straightforward, plot is quickly set up.

We are quickly introduced to the cast – a group of college kids heading into the Arizona desert for a camping trip. In no particular order, they are Lyle (Brian Reid), the obnoxious joker of the group, the two women who provide the object of Lyle’s lust and the film’s titillation – if they had names, I didn’t catch them; Duke (Jared Conti) – not the sharpest knife in the drawer – and his girlfriend, Taylor (Jamie Morris), who puts up with him for reasons unknown. There is the sensible couple – Stewart (Brandon Malone) and Liz (Katie Caroll) – and Taylor’s Sister, Abbey (Heather Morris).

While none of the characters are particularly original, neither do they descend into the ‘spot the victim’ stereotypes that do so much to undermine so many modern horror films.

And then we meet the Silo Killer (Carter Hagerman) himself… or his feet, at least. For much of the film, director Bill Koning avoids showing us the face of the killer opting instead to focus on his axe and the reactions of those that meet him.

Then we touch on the gangsters subplot. As it goes absolutely nowhere, I won’t mention it again.

So it’s back to the stars of the film. Of course, this being a horror film, the location they pick for their camping trip just happens to be fifteen minutes from the Arizona State Maximum Security Prison.

And if you think that someone might actually escape from the Arizona State Maximum Security Prison, reward yourself with a cookie.

Duke and Stewart hear this over the radio while out ‘hunting’, but decide not to mention the fact to the girls as it will only worry them. And… any escaped convict is going to make for the nearest town, isn’t he? He won’t want to hang around and kill off a random bunch of teens, will he?

After a short conversation, in which Lyle is pretty much excluded, the decision has been made to stay where they are and Stewart’s romantic plans remain intact.

We then have to endure some… ‘character development’, for want of a better word, during which the men behave like prats and the women complain about the men behaving like prats. This is blatant padding and really does slow things down badly – although we learn a little more about Stewart and Liz, most of the characters do little more than underline their previously defined stereotypes while the filmmakers make a few stabs at humour.

To be fair, a couple of the jokes aren’t so bad – Lyle’s t-shirt collection being reasonably well done – but on the whole the jokes are little more than a repetition of the sort of teenage gross-out gags that we’ve seen a million times before.

So it comes as something of a relief when the killings eventually start.

Koning acquits himself very well at this point. The effects are simple but brutal with much happening off camera leaving the poor unprepared viewer to imagine what an axe murder might look like.

There are a few surprises along the way, too. As I mentioned earlier, the characters, while not being paragons of originality are not so clichéd that you can immediately tell who is going to live and who is going to die. I still started to play ‘spot the survivor’, but turned out to be completely and consistently wrong.

The characters also display a refreshing lack both of heroism and idiot motivations once the killings start.

All in all, Silo Killer is a refreshing take on the slasher sub-genre of horror films, eschewing many of the traditional clichés of the genre and replacing the usual false ending with a scene of genuine creepiness.

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