Clinton Road (2019) Review
In the film, scripted by Derek Ross Mackay, a widowed fire fighter seeks closure after his wife goes missing on an actual haunted road in rural New Jersey but must unlock the roads secret if he wants to get out alive.
CLINTON ROAD, co-directed by Steve Stanulis and Richard Grieco, is a slasher flick with paranormal leanings that fails to be remotely competent in either field. The film drags along aimlessly and even with a meagre running time of seventy-seven minutes it still feels too long. This is the kind of film that you can go out to the kitchen during, grab a drink, make a sandwich, take a fifteen minute phone-call, answer a few texts and not miss anything remotely interesting. In fact, why not just switch the film off and do something else, ANYTHING ELSE, instead.
This flabbily constructed flick is a major misfire that makes me yearn for the days when independent horror flicks actually offered something worth tuning in for, where the lack of money was compensated for with decent ideas, inventive visuals, you know like Raimi’s The Evil Dead. Nowadays the majority of independent horror flicks are more of a soulless business enterprise, calculated to sell but made without the love, commitment and enthusiasm that shaped the genre years ago. I kept waiting for something vaguely interesting to happen, and waiting…and waiting.
Rapper and occasional actor Ice-T pops up briefly at the start of CLINTON ROAD and top-billed Eric Roberts puts in a cameo appearance that is so brief, and adds nothing to the story, that the sceptic in me feels this casting was nothing more than a means to give the film more selling leverage in the marketing place. If only the script was as calculated then we may actually have something that added up to something more than the big ‘so what’ that CLINTON ROAD actually is. On the plus side it’s always a pleasure to see actor James DeBello (Cabin Fever, 2002) onscreen however his affable screen presence is squandered here. It’s about time he was afforded roles that match his charisma.