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Jason reviews Munger Road

First rule of filmmaking, boys and girls: don't end your movie with the statement To Be Continued. Just don't. That said, the 85 or so minutes that proceeded that moment in Munger Road aren't bad.

On the eve of the annual Scarecrow Festival, two St. Charles police officers search for a return killer the same night four teenagers go missing on Munger Road. 

Munger Road is not for everybody. Gore fans will hate it because all the kills take place off camera, which I admit pissed me off after a while. I know you're a low-budget movie and you don't need buckets of blood to be scary. I get that. John Carpenter got it in 1978. But he still killed people on camera, he just did it without blood. And it worked great. Jeez!

Now that we're over that, Munger Road is a decent enough horror movie that plays with the urban legends surrounding the real Munger Road in Bartlett, Ill. This is material ripe for a horror movie, and writer/director Nicholas Smith is a competent enough filmmaker to tell the tale.

Munger Road looks good and Smith does a fine job balancing what is essentially two stories. One is about a group of teens trapped on Munger Road at night; the other is about a pair of cops chasing an escaped killer. Naturally, both these stories collide in a suspense-filled climax.

The problem is in the payoff. Like I said, we don't see the kills. And the whole movie just kind of stops without explaining itself. I get that Smith is alluding to what happened, and that's fine. He's already hinted at a sequel. But wrap up the damn movie even if you intend to make another one!

Grievances aside, I had fun with this movie. It felt like Carpenter's classic Halloween made in 1978 for $350,000. I dug seeing veteran actor Bruce Davison play a cop. And Brooke People and Lauren Storm looked damn fine.

Still, this is a Bad from me. It's a decent one-off, but I doubt I'll take a trip down Munger Road again.

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