Synopsis: 15 years after a toxin caused their hometown of Clear Lake, WI to be evacuated and them to be seduced into a cult run by a murderous preacher, a group of former friends return to the town to film a documentary and, in addition to being forced to remember their past, find their lives in danger.
Who’s in it? Michael Madsen, Carla Toutz and Morgan Simpson.
What I liked about this movie: Being from Wisconsin, I kind of liked the fact the movie is named after and filmed in a real Wisconsin town (though everything about the toxin and evacuation is fiction).
More importantly, I liked the main plot of the movie because it really isn’t that farfetched to believe a small town could be evacuated because of a toxic chemical in the water supply and someone would use the crisis to push their own religious/murderous agenda and recruit kids who looked up to him and, 15-years- later someone probably would want to do a documentary. In other words, it is a pretty sound back story for a horror movie.
What I didn’t like about this movie: I think the writers dropped the ball by telling the story of the toxin and preacher in flashbacks. That part, in my opinion at least, was the most interesting part of this movie and it might have been better to focus on that rather than trying to make a slasher movie set 15 years later.
Part of the reason I feel this way is, because they had to spend so much time explaining what happened, the movie dragged on quite a bit and I had to wait until toward the very end for something (other than the cliché cat coming out of nowhere thing) to happen. It also didn’t help things when it wasn’t overly difficult to figure out who the killer was. After all, there were only 6 potential suspects to start. Three were killed at roughly the same time while two others were on the other side of town. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who was left.
Final Opinion: As I said before, the writers should have left out the 15-years-later part and done a present-day movie about the toxin and preacher instead. The film would have been considerably better if they would have done that.
My Grade: 2 stars out of a possible 5.
