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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
Devil's Pond
(2003)
Julianne (Tara Reid) and Mitch (Kip Pardue) just got married after knowing each other less than a year. Julianne is a high society rich girl and Mitch is a good ole country boy (minus the accent of course). For their honeymoon they are spending two weeks in the woods on a mini island in the middle of a lake (I mean mini, like there a house and about six feet of walking space from the cabin to the water all around). The only way to get back and forth is on a boat and the nearest town is an hour away. Everything starts out great; they fix up the house, roast marshmallows, and tell camp stories. When Julianne notices Mitch has a safe box in the cabin things start to go awry. When she asks him about the box he becomes defensive and angry, demanding she never ask about it again.
Ten days out of their agreed fourteen have passed and Julianne wants to go home, so they can start their lives together. Plus her birth control has mysteriously disappeared. Mitch freaks out and tells her they’ll go when he decides they’ll go. The more she insists that they should leave, the angrier and more violent he becomes. Julianne discovers that Mitch used to stalk her before they ever officially met. During a heated argument Mitch grabs her by the throat and tells her he’ll kill her. She smashes a bottle over his head and tries to escape the island. He hunts her down and brings her back. She soon finds out that he had planned all along to keep her on the little island forever. Scared for her life she continually tries to escape the island and every time he brings her back the more angry and violent he becomes, to the point where he chains her to a tree and sinks the boat. Will she be able to escape Mitch and get home before he snaps completely? Will she be able to do it without the ability to swim or will she be doomed to be barefoot and pregnant on a tiny little island with a violent husband by her side…
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 The best time to ask a woman if she's sure about getting married is after the wedding.
Make-shift graves are scary.
Zing!
"I know you're upset and that'll pass, but why do you have to fuck up our entire honeymoon over it?!" -Mitch. The words themselves weren't funny, but they way he said it was.
Survey SAYS...
Tara Reid isn’t a terrible actor when she’s acting happy, normal, or drunk, but when she’s trying to act scared, angry, or upset it’s laughable at best. There’s a scene where Mitch and Julianne get into a huge fight and Mitch takes the boat and goes to the mainland and Julianne gets so pissed off she starts throwing things around the cabin angrily. Tara Reid’s portrayal of a fit of rage was the single most pathetic, yet hilarious thing I’ve ever seen. Even when she protested she didn’t sound like she meant it.
The story itself wasn’t bad, but two people are carrying the entire movie. There are only two other lines spoken by other people. So, the filmmakers are putting a lot of faith in Tara Reid to captivate audiences for 1.5 hours without getting naked or drinking out of a champagne bottle the size of a human (didn’t think I saw that episode of Taradise didja?). Kip Pardue did an okay job of being abusive and in denial about how the real world works, but nothing outstanding.
Really, I wouldn’t label this flick a “horror” movie. Nothing was scary or suspenseful. You know she makes it out alive because they show her smoking a cig all battered up by a truck in the first two minutes of the movie. You spend the whole movie waiting for the inevitable to happen. The back of the DVD claims that Mitch goes insane. Ehhh. I wouldn’t say that. He was abusive and thought like an abusive person. Yes, by today’s standards men who think women should be barefoot and pregnant is considered crazy, but a lot of men STILL think that way and not too long ago, that was normal to think that. So saying Mitch is insane is quite a stretch. So, I can give them thriller, but horror no. This is really just about abusive husbands. Heck, maybe the island was a metaphor for how women in abusive relationships feel or something. I don’t know I really don’t like metaphors and symbolism because I just don’t get it. Who likes to think when they watch movies anyway (okay, I probably have a million people disagreeing with me, but I don’t like to have to think too hard about a movie. It sucks all the fun out of it)?
Mitch was a total idiot. He could’ve convinced her to stay at the cabin permanently if he let her go to town, get electricity in the house, built a long dock to the mainland. No one wants to stay on a secluded island with nothing to do and just feel trapped all day. Instead he won’t let her leave the island or go to town and doesn’t even tell her that he bought the cabin for them to live in together. You don’t have to be together more than a year to figure that’s not going to work on them.
The more I think about it, the more I actually enjoyed this movie. The acting is bad, the whole movie is campy, but it was fun to watch. Seeing Tara Reid being a “painter” and all artistic was hilarious in itself (only because all the paintings looked like a 3rd grader painted it) and all her crafty escapes were funny. Plus, everything built up to a pretty good ending. Really, I think Tara Reid makes the movie she’s just so…B-Movie material. If you like...rifles racks in back windows, narcolepsy after sex, Tara Reid without makeup, harebrained schemes, and abusive husbands, then this is the flick for you. As for us...we give Devil’s Pond
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: Entertained
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