Friday, October 11, 2013

Donner Pass (2012)

There's a legend in these parts about the Donner Party and the power of eating living flesh. Wait I hear you saying, the Donner Party only ate flesh from those who were already dead. So let's call this poetic license in order to ramp up the scare factor and warp the impressionable minds of people who don't have a clue about the actual Donner Party.

Thomas invites his friend Mikey, Mikey's girlfriend Haley, and her friend Nicole to his parents cabin for the weekend.  I'm not sure if Haley's friends are all jerks, but Nicole is rude and annoying, plus she invites some cool kids to the cabin so they can party.

When Thomas asks the uninvited guests to leave, it doesn't go well.  Seriously, what always happens when an unpopular kid asks the popular kids to stop doing something?  Yup, they ignore and intimidate him. It doesn't help that Mikey wants to be cool so he sides with the popular kids.  Mikey even tells Thomas that this  will work out great because then the popular guys will owe him a favor. Yeah, that's realistic.  You can just hear the words, "Dude, we did you a favor by being at your stupid party" hanging in the air.

After some lame-o alpha male type fun, there is a break in the action as a few people decide to go to sleep. Mikey is such an idiot that he blows off his girlfriend to hang out, get drunk, and be a target in a snowball game. Then he's surprised when Haley is mad.

Soon there's a killer on the loose. People disappear. People die. Oh no who could it be. Oh my god there's a twist.  Since I don't care about any of the characters, none of it mattered.  Thomas reminded me of Andrew McCarthy in his early years when he did the uncool, nice guy, sympathetic character. But since I didn't care about him either, it's just an observation.

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