IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Steve Pulaski Drive-Thru is a horror film that feels like a broken-down mess of what was originally shaping out to be a great film, until bad editing decisions and long, drawn-out scenes of phony character interest corrupted the final product. The film takes place in a sleepy, Conservative town (one of those films that annoyingly tries to slam and critique one political party over the other for no good reason), which includes a Hella Burger restaurant, a fast-food chain represented by a clown named Horny. The town becomes rocked when Horny the clown comes to life, wielding a meat cleaver and killing several twentysomethings as revenge over something that happened many years ago. Both Mackenzie and her boyfriend Fisher (Leighton Meester and Nicholas D'Agosto, who both went on to do films far more interesting than this one) decide to try and stop the vicious murderer as he savagely maims and kills his victims, cleverly avoiding detectives as well.Undoubtedly the most entertaining soul in this film, even more-so than Horny, is Detective Dwayne Crockers (Larry Joe Campbell), a husky, bumbling detective who is the butt of almost every joke he's involved with. He finds ways to make his goofy self likable in the strangest situations, and even with limited screen time, manages to impress more than the twentysomethings he is cast with simply because his character is actually given the redeeming merit of humor. The remainder of the characters are depressingly archetypal versions of their stereotypes, prompting little in the way of humor or genuine emotion outside of maddening tedium on the audience's behalf.Before I move forward, let's talk about Horny, who is such a shortchanged villain it's almost depressing. One look at the character and he sends shockwaves of fear to your soul, boasting a permanently frightening face and a voice with a shivering raspy quality, as he speaks through a drive-thru microphone. For an inherently frightening killer, editor Daniel R. Padgett effectively robs him of any sort of suspense and personality because of the way he is constantly disrespected on screen. Whenever Horny appears on screen, loud, indistinguishable heavy metal music blasts out of the speakers combined with the uneasy effect of editing sped up to distracting speeds. The editing goes through a strange boost of energy during these scenes, as if some sort of requirement was struck for how long gruesomeness can appear on screen. With this brazen style of editing, Drive-Thru's suspense feels thrown away for a cheap and bogus way of getting right to the good stuff. With that, we spend a lot of time on undeveloped - and mostly uninteresting - characters, reciting mediocre dialog that methodically tries to piece together who Horny the Clown is and why he is doing what he's doing. These scenes, interjected in the middle of strangely-edited mayhem, throws off the pace of the film and often slows it to a crawl, with lots of dead-time being encountered between the action of the film. For a film clearly wanting to adhere to cheesy slasher principles, it's as if the film was trying to make a smarter, more investing crime story but, in turn, effectively turned out more boring and lackluster than even some of the worst slasher films of the 1980's. Single out a humorous cameo by Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock and a moderately enjoyable killer and there's little else to praise about Drive-Thru, a film that could've been at least bumped up to tolerable quality had the editing and pacing been taken into consideration.Starring: Leighton Meester, Nicholas D'Agosto, Lola Glaudini, Larry Joe Campbell, Melora Hardin, Paul Ganus, and Morgan Spurlock. Directed by: Brendan Cowles and Shane Kuhn.

btjones-62-755520 I'm not sure whether it was a result of the mood i was in while watching this film but i thought it was a fun modern exploitative take on the typical teen slasher film.Obviously made on a fairly low budget, it put a twist and witty take on what could have been a fairly dull affair of a typical 'tormented soul who puts on a masked killer and goes round chopping up horny/ stupid/ arrogant/ wisecrack kids.Although, not scary at any point, this film had some decent kill scenes and cleverly made funny T&A references without overtly displaying this.This was a fun film and although the ending was fairly disappointing and there seemed to be confusion about whether this clown did actually have supernatural powers, it was nonetheless a decent film.

jack_nance Adding comedy to horror again proves a recipe for acid reflux in this poor man's Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off. Leighton Meester's (Gossip Girl) friends and classmates are getting knocked off by a local burger chain's clown mascot, Horny the Clown (yeah, imagine the yuk-fest that provides), and of course discovers it all ties in to something her mother and her friends, who are all now (gasp) parents of the murder victims, did when they were her age. It gets really tired really fast. I started paying attention to other things, like how it seemed like there might not have been any budget for hair and make-up, or even hot water on set since both Meester and Melora Hardin, playing her mom, sported kinda greasy limp hair in most (but not all) the scenes in the film. That and feeling bad that Lola Glaudini left Criminal Minds then took a top billed role in this as a cop partnered with comedy "relief" Larry Joe Campbell (According to Jim) barely helped pass the time until the end credits and last bad metal song rolled.

twostpr41 all by yourself...on your couch with your dog...at 11:00 am...on a Monday. But that's just me.I'm not gonna summarize this flik because you can look it up at you're convinience at certain movie data-bases. Do it, then read me.This is great for those of us who love to be scared s**tless by clowns, but love to see suburban home-boys take it up the you-know-what. O.k. so I wasn't THAT scared, but very amused to be sure.So this movie LOVES paying homage to a plethora of 80's horror movies; "Happy Birthday To Me," "The Shinning," and "Nightmare on Elmstreet" just to name a few. The gore factor is good and sub-par; just how I like it, though the dialogue seems a little too on the nose, you know? Just a little TOO thought out and clever for it to come out of the mouths of these kids. It just sounds VERY scripted. Not very natural.Morgan Spurlock (of "Fast Food Nation" fame) is the tiny wink of super cool in this teenage slaughter-fest, and "Jan" from "The Office" probably has more acting chops than anyone.All in all, the story is more or less slightly above standard for a 2000-oughts movie, the B&G is pretty good, and Ouija boards aside, was pretty resourceful, if not just stealing stuff (see above) I'm a generous girl (surprise!) who loves cheap gore, so if you can watch this one for free (like I did) do it to it!