I'll try to be short and sweet. The directors and writers had an opportunity to tell an interesting, albiet messed up, story. They flopped. Camera work is shoddy. I could hardly understand half the dialogue. If I hadn't already known most of the story, I really don't think any of it would have made sense. Honestly, I watched it for Mr. Reedus. Even though his character is important to the story, he's really not in it enough to constitute watching it just for the eye candy.
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chriscornall22314 April 2011I don't know how anyone who has actually seen other movies would call this a movie with great acting. This movie is clouded with sophomoric scare tactics and so much melodrama that it was actually way more humorous than scary. I wont even address the ridiculous plot but i would like to thank the other reviewers on this forum who have referred to this as a great horror flick that "requires thought." It does require thought in the same manner that reading a Peanuts comic strip requires thought. There is nothing complex or creative about this film. I was hoping that this would turn out to be one of those hidden gems that somehow missed the popular audience and for the first 10-15 minutes there seems to be just enough promise to keep the viewer locked in. It quickly spirals from there however and manages to commit enough tacky plot drifts that it becomes impossible to forgive. Ultimately if your looking for an intelligent horror flick with decent acting keep looking.
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trashgang24 November 2015Red Canyon would never had the opportunity to be laying there on horror conventions these days wasn't it that Norman Reedus was in it with his Walking Dead fame. On the other hand, the sleeve looked great and did remind you of a Rob Zombie flick. But we all know that sleeves and promotion on the sleeve can trick the potential buyer.
I was fooled and only bought it for Reedus. It had so many possibilities to make it a great movie but the editing and the flash backs make this almost unwatchable. The throwback to explain what happened years ago are so badly done. The use frustrating shaky cams and in post production they added some blurry effect. By doing so the so-called gory parts are teared down to stupid scene's that do show a lot but doesn't work at all.
The flick itself had an okay story and I could dig the story but sadly the editor destroyed this flick.
Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5 -
Aries_Primal24 April 2014I don't know why great actor as Norman accepted to play in such ridiculous movie. It's more than terrible, it's awful! Not even one good scene, no atmosphere, no plot... I wonder why someone gave money this to be filmed. Hour and a half absolutely waste of time! It's worst than teen drama, it's not even a horror, it's some kind of joke! Forget watching this, better find some friend and go to a bar! Unrelated scenes, hysterical girls, idiotic accidents... The guy who wrote the scenario must have been drunk. Without overstate - this is the worst thing I've ever seen! Half of the movie is how a few teens going on vacation, it should be in first ten to fifteen minutes, not more than half-hour. Not even one good scene, non violence, or sex, or fear even when they run and after them are killers who want to tear them apart. I could not feel anything of their emotions, I stayed like "When the interesting part will come?" The movie ended and it doesn't came. Now you go to thank toy Norman Reedus, because more of the raiting you have is because of him!
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karljj16 September 2010I made the mistake of reading the IMDb reviews and forum posts on this title and believing them, what a sucker I am.
This film was awful, if they had spent half the effort making it as they did flooding the internet with positive reviews it may have been watchable. It was not shocking, it was not "real", it was incredibly poor.
Here is an example of the "amazing" acting: Woman opens cupboard, shotgun fall onto her making her fall onto the ground(it must be a very heavy shotgun!!), the gun goes off inches from her head and she casually says, " I hate it here". WTF!!!!!!!!
I have been unable to find a single honest review on the internet of this film, unless you really believe it is a 10/10 shockfest, the most amazing, sick, romantic, gory, dramatic, life changing event of the century then I suggest you stay away. -
poolandrews27 December 2011Red Canyon starts as brother & sister Devon (Tim Draxl) & Regina (Christine Lakin) along with several of their friends drive along the long isolated desert highways of Utah en-route to their hometown of Red Canyon, in an attack which still haunts Regina she was raped in a old mine shaft a few years earlier & Devon feels that facing up to the attack will help her get over it. Regina heads to the mine to confront her fears but is attacked again & barely manages to get away, the cops are called the drug making rapist is arrested but soon finds himself free when the Sheriff is murdered by his mates who release him. The rapist & killers & drug dealers all head over to where Devon, Regina & their friends are & terrorise them as they kill them one-by-one...
Co-written, co-produced & directed by Giovanni Rodriquez this boring & silly horror thriller is pretty poor, apart from some nice views Red Canyon the film & the town has little going for it. The script is a cross between all those sandy desert set horror films like The Hills Have Eyes (2006) with it's location & teen slasher feel & Straw Dogs (1971) with it's theme of rape & a spirited fightback by the potential victims, only it's nowhere near as good as either of those films. The script tries to be too clever for it's own good, there are constant confused flashbacks to earlier events that are different each time & are just randomly edited into the main film & the final ten minutes is supposed to feature several twist's but they are all pretty predictable, aren't properly explained & don't make a whole lot of sense when you think about them. Running just over 90 minutes Red Canyon is pretty dull & boring, every aspect of Red Canyon is taken from another better film & are just thrown together with little purpose. There is one piece of really bad scripting that is amongst the worst I have ever seen, while hiding in a secret tunnel Regina decides to try & grab her necklace which she dropped & sicks her hand out of the cover to try & find it but the killer then see's her & everyone's cover is blown for no great reason. I mean why give yourself away when you have a good hiding place? All for a stupid necklace?
The scenery is quite nice I suppose, it's fairly well made if forgettable & all too familiar. There's not much gore & the rape isn't graphic either. There's lots of annoying scares like Dog's suddenly coming out of nowhere & barking, noises outside a window that turn out to be Cow's & lots of teens walking around in the dark.
With a supposed budget of about $1,500,000 this was filmed in Utah, it has reasonable production values but is forgettable. The acting is alright, no-ones going to win any awards though.
Red Canyon is a poor patchwork horror film that steals it's ideas from better films & doesn't even make the most of them, I can't say i enjoyed the confusing mix of flashbacks, daft twist's & dumb teenagers. I didn't like it. -
BakuryuuTyranno24 October 2011Red Canyon follows Devon and Regiina and their friends on their visit to an old family home. Unfortunately, a depraved incident happened years ago, which has consequences in the present day.
Thankfully, unlike with say, that "Friday the 13th" remake, it actually feels like they're on vacation. For example, when the group is split up, someone asks whether they're going to return to the others before finding somewhere they can have lunch; which may be a little thing but it helps. Also, as they're arriving everyone seems tired of the others, something that often occurs during long road trips.
Unfortunately that leaves less time for actual characterisation. Regina seems traumatised by the past events, Tom seems to be the obnoxious guy and Terra might be the slutty girl unless that scene's intention was to characterise another guy as lecherous. That's about it.
Actually there isn't much splatter on screen but what's seen tends to be brutal. What drags the film down though is... without spoilers, I can only say there's a very long explanation of the past event which drags on for around ten minutes towards the finale. That's when I stopped caring, incidentally.
The film shows some promise and while decent, ultimately it's nothing special. -
kosmasp7 April 2020Now there is another Red Canyon (a western), that I haven't seen yet. But by the looks of it, it is way better than this movie right here. So many flaws, so many bad things ... and even a Norman Reedus can't save it. While I haven't seen any of the Walking Dead yet (on my list, but so many other things to watch), this was way before he got famous for that.
So while you might have ended up here because of him, you probably will be very much dissapointed if that is the case. Don't waste your time, this is as weak as the rating make it out to be -
jakelong3116 March 2018Okay, so I decided to watch this movie because it has my favorite actor Justin Hartley from This Is Us, who plays Kevin Pearson in that show (and quite well, I might add). I knew this was going to be bad based on what I'd read but I thought maybe it would at least be fun to watch. It was not.
It was just plain bad. Not "so bad it was good." Just awful. There was literally nothing good about it. Don't watch it. Don't even think about it. Go do something else instead. Pretty much anything else would be a better use of your time. -
takato05242 January 2021Originally I turned to this movie cuz my boy Justin Hartley was in it, and I loved him as green arrow on smallville. That's about the only thing I liked about this film. It was all over the place. The flashbacks were skewed, the dialogue sounded forced, and the actors seemed like this was their first time acting. The ending is what really made me give this 1 star. There's no conclusion. The final girl gets kidnapped by her brother, which I couldn't tell if they were half siblings or full (earlier it was revealed the brothers father wasn't who we thought he was), and he rapes her. But in the flashback they tried to make him rape her and he couldn't because it was his sister. So now suddenly he can? And that's how it ends? Literally fades to black as he puts the d in her. All thumbs down
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reddiemurf8127 December 2020Cheaply shot/edited/acted/written/etc. The only thing I enjoyed about this one was seeing Christine Lakin,, but even that wasn't enough to make this worthwhile. Truly revolting,, just don't even bother looking at the trailer.
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Red Canyon reminded me a lot of old-style horror movies, where the bad guys were believable & therefore more terrifying. Maybe it's just me, but once horror movies started to take turns with Michael, Freddie & Jason, I grew bored, quickly. A movie should be scary because it shows horrific things that could actually happen, and Red Canyon delivers that in spades.
It's not slick, it's not "Hollywood-pretty", but it features some fantastic actors that are truly guided to do their best work by the director. I was most impressed with Norman Reedus (Boondock Saints). The scenery is perfect for a tale such as this. You're allowed to actually THINK while watching this movie; a respite from being spoon-fed (which makes for a boring movie), it's a much "smarter" film than your average horror fare.
Horror is not normally my favorite genre, but I was really impressed with this movie. Great story, fabulous acting, etc. Was it sick and twisted? You bet. Did it scare the hell out of me? Yes, all three times I've watched it thus far! Was it awesome? Hell yes!! I really enjoyed it and will look forward to the next film by this director. -
Prior to Red Canyon, Wolf Creek taught us all that carefree road trips really can go wrong. Red Canyon takes that lesson, turns it on its ear, reminds you that the boogey man is more real than supernatural and then to reinforce the message hits you over the head and says "let sleeping dogs lie". The script, the cast and the overall production are much more professional than you expect in films of this nature. The camera work, the lighting and some of the angles that the director chose for shots gave things a fresh flow.
The cast was all quite good, but both Justin Hartley and Christine Lakin took their material and made their characters quite compelling. I look forward to the day when someone realizes that Justin Hartley has the acting chops to play more than the affable good guy who screws up from time to time. -
Jester22224 March 2020Sad that someone from the film clearly went out of way to make fake reviews. Just silly scores as well.
The director failed to deliver any genuine chills or tension. The opportunities were there to have an ok redneck kills people film. Even with some quality actors involved he still couldnt create tension. To be fair....the script he had was also poor and nonsensical. Shooting friend in leg, pulling telephone wire out of wall and many more silly moments. .... Lot of scenes made no sense and some characters weren't explained or developed properly. Pointless motorbike riding scenes!? A motorbike accident scene that was supposed to be scary was just laughable Shaky and blurred footage edited far too quickly also grated. Even the violence and make up was poor. Shame. Had potential, good cast but all wasted with poor direction and even worse script. Don't bother. -
Cinnyaste31 March 2011Warning, I did not see this film.
In deciding to watch, I read the glowing reviews.
Not just glowing, but reviews meant for real films with real actors, a real script and a real Director.
I noted the reviews were the only ones written by a particular author. Not so unusual, but odds are a few reviewers would've written more than one review.
Then there was the fact they were all 10 star reviews.
"Gee," I thought, "COULD THESE POSSIBLY BE FAKE REVIEWS???" Filmmakers, you're terribly misguided. And quite idiotic. Will you do anything to get people to watch this piece of crap? Why not write a good or at least better script instead.
Your attempt at manipulation failed as all unctuous plots do when they test people's intelligence. And from a fellow filmmaker - screw you. You're everything that's wrong with the industry. -
jaywinemiller17 December 2018I would floss my teeth with rusted barbed wire before watching this movie again.
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virginiarand7 March 2021The plot is all over the place, the editing is terrible, it looks like they went for the first take every time and I kept expecting it to be smarter than it was. That said, the background music was okay and I laughed twice.
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orangeattack3 November 2009Red Canyon looks like a horror film, it acts like a horror film, but at its heart - it's kind of a love story. It all comes down to people loving each other too much. A son wants his father's approval so badly - it nearly drives him mad. He's so jealous of his father's attention - he takes part in a reprehensible act and in the end, ultimately he's willing to kill for his father.
A brother is torn apart - and then broken by his inability to protect the sister he loves.
An old boyfriend can't get the girl he let down out of his mind or his heart.
An old man is still entwined with the children of his dead lover.
Red Canyon shows the worst side of love - and makes a pretty good case for the fact that love can literally drive you crazy. -
taytaydiggs1227 September 2011This movie was totally awesome! Loved it all! Norman Reedus was terrifying and in control. There were so many twists and things you wouldn't expect. I watch this movie at least twice a day since I got it. It's sick but brilliant! If you have a hard time watching movies that contain certain graphic moments then this is not the movie for you. If you can handle it and like to see some good killing then watch this. It will blow your mind! I have to admit there are some bad acting in here but it's not that bad. There could have been a little more gore for a rated R horror movie but it's still good. Reminds me of House of 1000 Corpses. Norman Reedus is my favorite in this. He's the best of the best and can do anything. A shame what happens. But all in all it's a pretty damn good flick!
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sushihoney8 November 2009Red Canyon feels like it's somewhere between a horror film a film noir set in the American west. It shares the same sense of heart pounding suspense and build - up that High Tension had - the same excruciating sense of dread until the final awful confrontation. It will also keep you guessing like no film I've ever seen before. In many ways it's flawed - but I liked those flaws - because they let you fill in your own story line - not everything is fed to you - and days after the movie you still kind of wonder about each detail in the story and if you've read what you've seen correctly. I watched it with a friend of mine - and she was almost started crying at the end. As much as it's a horror film - it gives you that feeling of reality and in a VERY strange way touches some of the deepest fears and taboos in our every culture.
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mikelang4215 October 2011Films with Red in the title tend to be good for some reason. No i am not doing a list, though i will mention top Australian thriller Red Hill. This did not get a UK theatre release. I only know of it as it was given faint praise by Kim Newman in an issue of Empire mag on it's belated DVD release.It turns out to be a handsomely filmed Drama with horror overtones as two youngsters and their friends return to the family home in the badlands of Utah, where a brutal rape causes them to return to try to put it behind them. Not the best idea to say the least, but this manages to carry it off with a good script and decent acting.Think the opposite side of the plot in the excellent Wolf Creek and your nearly there. Well worth a look and there's a dog you would not take down the pub!