No real surprises here. Very much a substandard, threadbare and generic DTV masked serial killer slasher with a couple of familiar names attached. But don't fear you do get a bit of nudity here and more blood here and there. You just gotta stick it out. In a small rural working class town Morningside, a group of drug runners seemed to be targeted by a ritualistic serial killer.
The progressive drama features heavily, as it's more or less story based, developing a few level-headed plot threads (the sheriff's relationship with a long-time friend / and the friend's struggles to care for his ailing wife), giving certain actions a bit of weight and character motivations (conflict between drug runners) for the first hour. In doing so, it can meander and feel flat, where I found the killer and the mystery around their exploits to be pushed aside early on (so it seems), downsizing the red herrings, even though from the get-go there's only one or two real choices, where it's not too hard to figure it out. Our sheriff seems to trip and fall into a lot of the clues, than any real work, as the viewer is a couple steps ahead and I don't think we are meant to be either. In spite of that I was kept engaged mainly thanks to better-than-expected performances. Robert Pralgo goes about things in a rather relaxed manner as the town sheriff, maybe too so, but it's a likeable performance. Gotta love his; "drugs are bad" speech to a class of school kids. Reliable genre favorite Tiffany Shepis gives proceedings a bit more punch as his deputy and a dreary Nicholas Brendan pines a lot, which is understandable from what his character is facing. Other than the strong core, the rest of the cast are hit or miss.
It does take its time to get where it's going, but in the second act it gathers momentum throwing in some deranged jolts, no real tension, by lingering on cheap gore FX, yet resourceful for its budget, as our killer (wearing a glittering black cloak and ceremony mask), when they're not using a sacrificial mace, messily goes to work on their victims with a grinder removing vital organs in a sort of "DEXTER" style set-up. It looks it, and it's executed quite plainly, outside of some oddly titled camera shots, but it's more than acceptable in its low-rent delivery.
