Movie Review: Clinton Road (2019)

June 6, 2020

Written by DanXIII

Daniel XIII; the result of an arcane ritual involving a King Diamond album, a box of Count Chocula, and a copy of Swank magazine, is a screenwriter, director, producer, actor, artist, and reviewer of fright flicks…Who hates ya baby?

Poor Mike (Ace Young); his wife Jessica (Sarah Pribis), has pulled ye olde vanishing act somewhere in the vicinity of Clinton Road, New Jersey, U.S. of mother fuckin’ A.!

Well the only thing to do is gather up some comrades… in this case Sarah’s sister Isabella (Katie Morrison), Michael’s new girlfriend Kayla (Lauren LaVera), their friend Gianna (Erin O’Brien) and her psychic boyfriend Begory (Cabin Fever‘s James DeBello), and the voice of cynicism that is oft-required in supernatural tales, Mikey’s buddy Tyler (Cody Calafiore)… and head down to Clinton road and solve that mystery once-and-mother fuckin’-for-all!

Of course this leads to plenty of horror biz cliches including sex in the woods, strange noises that cause the group to separate to investigate, and even that hoary ol’ chestnut; “the creepy forest ranger” (Carlos Leon)… and don’t forget the ghosts! And it’s that familiarity that leads to some of this pictures biggest faults.

There is absolutely nothing in Clinton Road that horror hounds haven’t seen a hundred times before… this is a by-the-numbers fright flick that tells it’s story well (eventually… more on that in a bit), with a strong cast… and that is that.

The other major problem here is that it takes nearly forty minutes for the supernatural shenanigans to get really cooking (with a large portion of that given to an exposition heavy sequence set in a nightclub that seems mainly to exist to shoehorn in appearances by famous faces including Ice-T, The Soprano‘s Vincent Pastore, Maniac Cop 2‘s Bo Dietl, and Eric Roberts)… and this film runs and hour and seventeen minutes. Not exactly a welcome thing for boils n’ ghouls ready to dive balls deep into the scares.

The biggest draw to this picture is to see how the directing duo of 21 Jump Street’s Richard Grieco and character actor Steve Stanulis fare… and the honest answer is; not bad at all… but they need a stronger story than Clinton Road if they decide to make a return to our beloved horror biz.

 

 

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