Southbound (2015)

Directed by: Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath, Radio Silence | 85 minutes | fantasy, horror, thriller | Actors: Chad Villella, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Kristina Pesic, Fabianne Therese, Nathalie Love, Hannah Marks, Dana Gould, Anessa Ramsey, Susan Burke, Davey Johnson, Mather Zickel, Karla Droege, Zoe Cooper, Justin Welborn, David Yow, Tipper Newton, Matt Peters, Maria Olsen, Tyler Tuione

Horror is quite a difficult genre. A horror story shouldn’t be too complicated, because in the end it’s all about chopping, sawing and drilling. You should also not saddle the viewer with sympathetic characters, because these are ultimately the victims of chopping, sawing and drilling. The makers of the American horror film ‘Southbound’ opted for a trick by weaving five short stories together. Not too complicated and with characters you hardly get to know.

All stories are set in the southern United States, in a desert-like area reminiscent of ‘Nocturnal Animals’ and ‘Hell or High Water’. In the first story, two blood-stained men drive the same laps over and over through the desert, chased by murderous fantasy creatures. In the second story, a girl jazz band is picked up by a neat (?) couple when the band is stuck by the side of the road. In the third story, a man and a badly injured girl end up in an abandoned hospital, in the fourth a guy raids a shady bar in search of his long-lost sister. In the last story, a family on vacation in the middle of the desert has to deal with a couple of home invaders.

These simple stories are filled to the brim with every horror cliché you can think of. A scary cult, scary tunes on the radio, scary dolls, scary masks, scary knives, dismembered faces, vomit like black tar, a hand disappearing into a body, scary twins and much, much more. Oh, and of course we also have a bunch of girls in underwear who do the things that girls in underwear do in horror movies.

Still, ‘Southbound’ isn’t all that bad, with consistency being its greatest quality. The stories flow smoothly into each other and the setting is always the same ghostly desert. Although we are dealing with different screenwriters and directors, we never feel like we are watching different films. There’s plenty of gore, but not too extreme, and at times there’s a bit of black humor, especially in the abandoned hospital story.

For a topper ‘Southbound’ offers too few surprises and the acting is not always as strong. But those who like a bit of variety and who also have a thing for those bleak American desert roads (including bad bars) will enjoy a good 85 minutes here.