Shadow #173 (A-)

Tagline: The horrors of combat pale in comparison to what awaits a war veteran when he goes on a biking trip and crosses paths with a sadistic butcher.

Ok, I'm a few dozen minutes in and I am wondering to myself, am I missing something here?  A totally random guy (who happens to be the lead role in this movie), is back from the war...and now off on a BMX journey of sorts, somewhere out in the rolling hills...and he stops at a bar for a beer.  Alright, I'm with all of that so far.  Then, two guys come in and start messing with a local girl.  The young war vet then sticks up for the local girl...and of course boom, romance instantly.  Here's where I get confused.  Low and behold they both have nearly identical BMX bikes (same kind basically just different colors), the same helmet styles, same goggles...looks like they shopped for their jackets at the same trendy out-doorsy store.  How in the hell?  These are all way to random items for me...c'mon!

Now I'm about 36 minutes in.  HOLY HOSTEL-LIKE SHIT!!!  Woah!  This is beginning to remind me of Frontier(s).  For the record, I just had to push pause and turn on a light in the room I'm in, as well as peek my head into the other side of the hallway.  That's just an FYI.  Someone please tell me, where is that girl's voice coming from?  She called to him when he was outside - clear as day and very loudly - then she called to him in roughly 3 different corridors from deep within the house, and yet again from the basement.  But in each room he enters she is not there??

Ok, so this movie was surprisingly only 1 hour and 17 minutes long.  Short and sweet.  Everything I said above in which I was confused about, I now understand.  But hell....what a thrill ride.  Man, my heart was pumping throughout this flick.  It was definitely not what I expected and I recommend this for all horror movie fans.  In fact, from looking at the cover of the DVD, coupled with how the movie started with the plot of a kid on a biking trip in the flowing hills of a random town (no clue)...I ended up completely blind-sided and rewarded by this movie.  I suppose however my mind created it's own vision of what was going to occur, and I didn't expect something similar to Hostel meets Frontier(s) which then meets the Horde.  In all honesty, except for perhaps Hostel....and that's a small maybe because I did really like Hostel....the Horde and Frontier(s) top this movie by a few solid notches, but Shadow was still good enough to earn a low A rating from me.

I need to find out if that butcher guy has acted in other movies??   I just did an image search.  Creepy.  Now that's a classic horror movie actor/presence.  He needs to be in more cinema, pronto.  Per my image search, I'd say that in real life he actually looks like the brother of Coach from Survivor.  I purposely am not giving a snapshot of the butcher because I believe that needs to be a surprise for when you watch for yourself.

Here are two pictures.  This guy below isn't even the main bad guy...