Wreckage starts as an ex Ranger named Jared (Mike Erwin) is in the middle of a drag race with an annoying rich kid, unfortunately his classic muscle car blow's a gasket & he loses the race & has no way of getting home. His girlfriend Kate (Cameron Richardson), his friend Rick (Aaron Paul) & his girlfriend Jessica (Kelly Kruger) were along for the ride & are also stranded in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town is a four mile walk whereas they drove past an old junkyard about a mile back, they decide to walk to the junkyard & find the spares needed to repair Jared's car. Once they get to the junkyard it's after dark & it's closed, they decide to climb the fence & take what they need but while showing off with his gun Rick accidentally shoots Kate. Jared says he will run to the nearest town & bring back help while Rick & Jessica stay with Kate, Jared reaches the town finds help. Going back to the junkyard with Sheriff Macabee (Roger Perry) they find that Rick, Jessica & Kate have mysteriously disappeared, then they find Jessicas dead body & realise that killer is on the loose...
Produced & directed by John Mallory Asher who also appears in the film as Deputy Berry (the one that gets left behind at the station when the Sheriff goes with Jared to the junkyard to investigate his claims) I wasn't expecting much from Wreckage, to be honest I was expecting some dull generic low budget teen slasher film & while you could say Wreckage isn't a million miles from being exactly that there's a little bit more to it. I must admit that Wreckage isn't that bad for what it is, the script plays half like a teen slasher & half like a mystery thriller with disappearing friends angle, the identity of the killer not being known, the one or two red herrings & a reasonable twist ending that does actually work on a basic level although if you think about it too much the holes start to appear. At only 80 minutes it moves along at a good pace, as I said the mystery thriller elements keep things slightly more interesting than your average teen slasher & overall I quite liked it. Of course it's nothing amazing, there are still holes in the plot like after the killer is revealed & their motives explained who actually killed the guy at the start who was trying to rape that woman? In the context & time-line of the film the killer couldn't have killed the guy since they hadn't arrived yet & they had never been to the junkyard before so who was it?
The location used is quite good, the old junkyard is a decent place to set a horror film, the gore is a bit disappointing with only a few gunshot wounds, a bit of blood splatter & a stabbing on offer. Wreckage is available in both 'R' rated & 'Unrated' editions in the US which usually means the Unrated cut has more footage (althogh not always necessarily gory or sexual) it seems that the two versions are identical with absolutely no difference between them at all apart from the DVD artwork. Whether this is a genuine mistake or a marketing ploy who knows? I did actually find myself agreeing with most of the decisions made here by the character's, most of them seem to behave like proper people & they don't split up needlessly & the Sheriff tries to keep good control & actually suggests useful ideas with the irritating moment at the end where Jared would rather chase & fight the killer than drive his girlfriend Kate, who has been shot remember & is badly injured, to hospital.
With a supposed budget of about $500,000 this was shot on a pretty low budget, apparently filmed in Los Angeles & Wilmington. The production values are decent enough, there's not much style here but at least you can see what's happening & the lack of any sign of a shaky hand-held camcorder & any annoying machine gun editing helps. The acting is alright, the guy who plays Jimmy the hillbilly owner of the junkyard skates the thin line between being annoying & funny & just about manages to be funny.
Wreckage really wasn't the complete wreck I was expecting, it's a fairly good mixture of teen slasher & mystery thriller that I thought passed the time. Sure there are one or two plot holes & maybe the twist ending is a little hard to believe but it's a film, it's a work of fiction so I just went with it in this case.
Produced & directed by John Mallory Asher who also appears in the film as Deputy Berry (the one that gets left behind at the station when the Sheriff goes with Jared to the junkyard to investigate his claims) I wasn't expecting much from Wreckage, to be honest I was expecting some dull generic low budget teen slasher film & while you could say Wreckage isn't a million miles from being exactly that there's a little bit more to it. I must admit that Wreckage isn't that bad for what it is, the script plays half like a teen slasher & half like a mystery thriller with disappearing friends angle, the identity of the killer not being known, the one or two red herrings & a reasonable twist ending that does actually work on a basic level although if you think about it too much the holes start to appear. At only 80 minutes it moves along at a good pace, as I said the mystery thriller elements keep things slightly more interesting than your average teen slasher & overall I quite liked it. Of course it's nothing amazing, there are still holes in the plot like after the killer is revealed & their motives explained who actually killed the guy at the start who was trying to rape that woman? In the context & time-line of the film the killer couldn't have killed the guy since they hadn't arrived yet & they had never been to the junkyard before so who was it?
The location used is quite good, the old junkyard is a decent place to set a horror film, the gore is a bit disappointing with only a few gunshot wounds, a bit of blood splatter & a stabbing on offer. Wreckage is available in both 'R' rated & 'Unrated' editions in the US which usually means the Unrated cut has more footage (althogh not always necessarily gory or sexual) it seems that the two versions are identical with absolutely no difference between them at all apart from the DVD artwork. Whether this is a genuine mistake or a marketing ploy who knows? I did actually find myself agreeing with most of the decisions made here by the character's, most of them seem to behave like proper people & they don't split up needlessly & the Sheriff tries to keep good control & actually suggests useful ideas with the irritating moment at the end where Jared would rather chase & fight the killer than drive his girlfriend Kate, who has been shot remember & is badly injured, to hospital.
With a supposed budget of about $500,000 this was shot on a pretty low budget, apparently filmed in Los Angeles & Wilmington. The production values are decent enough, there's not much style here but at least you can see what's happening & the lack of any sign of a shaky hand-held camcorder & any annoying machine gun editing helps. The acting is alright, the guy who plays Jimmy the hillbilly owner of the junkyard skates the thin line between being annoying & funny & just about manages to be funny.
Wreckage really wasn't the complete wreck I was expecting, it's a fairly good mixture of teen slasher & mystery thriller that I thought passed the time. Sure there are one or two plot holes & maybe the twist ending is a little hard to believe but it's a film, it's a work of fiction so I just went with it in this case.