HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS SUMMON THREE HALLOWEEN CORN DEMONS
★★★★☆ (Worth the Watch)
Director: Justin M. Seaman
2016
An aimless high school senior named Sam (Mitchell Musolino) spends his days working at a lawncare business with his best friend Josh and waiting for his favorite holiday. The young man creates a haunted house and lives by certain Halloween rules, but this year he’s told by his father that he must spend the special night collecting food for the local church run by Ms. Barnhart (Linnea Quigley). What about the rock concert for Demon Inferno? How will Sam and Josh manage to get tickets, and will they invite Sam’s crush who works at the skating rink?
The Barn was an absolute pleasure to watch. With the exception of too many close ups, it’s competently filmed, and achieves a goal so many 21st century 80s films attempt: It feels like the 1980s. Clothes, hair, and lingo take you back to those tubular times, and even special effects and practical effects are era appropriate. Perhaps the movie’s biggest strength is its characters, none of which you want to see harmed. Every single person with the exception of the main baddies are likable, and not many directors can pull this off.
The story really begins in a corn-plentiful town called Wheary Falls, as a pastor addresses his congregation on Halloween night. Afterward, a boy named George follows a girl to a mysterious barn no one is supposed to go near, only for the girl to get pickaxed in the head by one of three country hayseed monsters. This shocking kill gets you warmed up for what’s to come because anyone can be a victim, and be sure, the blood will flow. The Barn takes its cue from vintage horror and Evil Dead movies, so the gore is graphic and we’re gifted a slaughter climax so many other films tease us with, but leave out.
Thirty years after the girl dies, Sam starts his quest to find tickets to Demon Inferno’s midnight Halloween concert without his father knowing. The plot gets a little loose around then as we’re supposed to believe that Sam and his friends driving around and collecting canned goods in a neighboring town is going to appease Dad and Ms. Barnhart. What really matters though is that this neighboring town is Wheary Falls and Sam and his five friends are the ones who arrive at the spooky barn doors, accidentally summoning the three demons from long ago: Pumpkin Head, Scooby-Doo Miner, and Scarecrow. The results of their mistake is a massacre stretching from nearby houses all the way to the Harvest Hootenany, an excuse for locals to wear flannel and dance to the tunes of The Legendary Huckleberries. This movie has good music, nipples, beheadings, and two unlikely heroes in Sam and Josh, who turn up the bromance factor the longer the battle stretches out and their survival look bleak.
The Barn is a rare film that knows what a pay-off is. I joke about the three demons, but the writer does a good job in setting up our mythology, leading to satisfying ah-ha moments in the end. We’re introduced to our main characters’ relationships at familiar haunts that make us nostalgic for our own childhood buddies; we feel emotion when one of these teens shuffles off this mortal coil via vine or sickle. The director has gifted us a new Halloween classic that is precise and focused. Somebody give this guy the next Fear Street movie.
GENRES: Body Horror, Diverse Characters, Funny, Monster/Creature
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