[The Villain]

After a brief conversation i had with Nini_luv5 about the Masters of Horror series, i decided to revisit them and watch each episode. I've also decided to post reviews after watching each episode for the sake of conversation.

Beginning in 2005, creator Mick Garris brought several famous horror writers/directors to create a series of horror movies shorts. This was the first episode.

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road
This first episode was directed by Don Cascarelli whose most notable movie is Phantasm.

In the film, Ellen played by Bree Turner (The Ugly Truth, My Best Friends Wedding) gets into a car accident on the side of the road after she hits another car while distracted by her radio. When she awakes she checks on the car she hit and finds a trail of blood leading from the car to the woods. Upon following the trail she is shocked to find a monster of a man named Moonface dragging the victim of the car behind him. The film then follows Ellen as she tries to escape Moonface as he chases her through the woods.

First of all i have to say that the title of this episode is just terrible. It couldnt possibly get any more vague and uncreative. It might as well just be called Stuff Happens.

The movie switches back and forth between Ellen's escape through the woods and moments of her life with her husband Bruce played by Ethan Embry (Can't Hardly Wait, Vegas Vacation.) Bruce is a insufferable survivalist tool who is constantly spouting out pointless life lessons that offer no advice or insight into any situation. Its just as vague as the title of the movie.

There are constant scenes of Bruce teaching Ellen how to fire a gun and throw a knife and other tips like hes training her to be an assassin wherein he's really just a nut. He's also a huge jerk as he calls her pathetic and a whore numerous times.

However it seems as if all his stupid survivalist crap seems to stick with Ellen as instead of just running away (which is horror movie 101) she creates stupid traps that do nothing but waste time. This is annoying and makes Ellen a very unlikable heroine in my mind but at least it shows that Bruce's strange lessons are actually pointless.

Until later when his survivalist lessons actually come in handy. What kind of message does that give off? That it was good that her crazy abusive husband gave her stupid advice and pointless training for when she would have to fight the mud people (An actual thing he says will rise up one day) That makes her seem even more unlikable in my opinion.

The movie also stars Angus Scrimm who is most known for his role as The Tall Man in the Phantasm movies. He plays a crazy old man named Buddy who Moonface keeps as prisoner. Buddy is way too over the top and comical and distracts the movie from what is going on at the time. His role could've been completely lifted out of the movie and nothing would have been lost.

Without giving anything away, i also disliked the ending as it seemed out of character and contradictory plus there was a cheesy one-liner which i really hate. The only thing i liked was Moonface but even he was basically a generic giant killer.

On a scale of 1 to 5:
2