Welcome
back for another of my blind watch reviews. Every once in a while I like to
randomly pick a flick from one of the many streaming services I subscribe to
and watch it. I go out of my way to not know anything about what I’m about to
watch. No trailer, reviews, or plot synopses allowed! It reminds me of browsing
the shelves of my local Mom and Pop video store back in the day picking stuff
solely based on the cast and whether it had a bad ass cover. Sometimes this
works out and other times I’m miserable. Let’s see where Head Count falls.
We
meet our main character, Evan, as he drops his college friends off at the
airport. Seems like they are going on Spring Break while he is doomed to spend
it with his older brother in the middle of nowhere. We watch as he drives into
the desert to a small trailer where his brother, Peyton, is meditating. The
pair go for a hike in the desert and meet up with a group of young people that
have rented a house nearby and are partying. Evan hooks up with a girl, Zoe,
and ditches his brother. After telling spooky stories around the fire weird
stuff starts to happen. It seems that reading random stuff off the internet to
scare your new friends isn’t such a great idea. You might accidentally summon a
demon! Or at least that is what I think it is. It might just be a vengeful
spirit or some other supernatural baddie. For the purposes of this review I’m
just going to refer to it as a demon.
This
isn’t what I was expecting at all when I sat down to watch Head Count. Early on
it seemed as if we were going to get one of those “kids go off to an isolated
location to party and get picked off one at a time” sort of flicks. That kind
of happens but not how I thought it would. Be warned that some spoilers are
coming. When Evan reads the text from the website, he accidentally summons
a demon or evil spirit and starts off a series of events that don’t end well.
The thing doesn’t take any direct action for most of the movie but is instead a
shapeshifter that lurks in plain sight. So, you have a bunch of instances where
someone is in more than one place at a time. What is really cool is that the
audience can catch onto this if you are paying attention long before the
characters do. This gets super creepy as the first few times are very subtle
and you aren’t sure what you just saw.
Head
Count is also written in such a way that it explains why the monster just
didn’t kill them all right away. There is a ritual that forces the victims to
come in sets of five. This is further reinforced in a couple other ways that if
you are paying attention become obvious. The creature has to manipulate them so
that they break into appropriately sized groups before it can get to the
business of killing
them. I’m always complaining about movies that don’t take
the time to make sure they have a fleshed-out script. Here we have an excellent
example of what you should have done before picking up a camera. There are a
satisfying set of rules by which the story has to play out. I like that.
This is creepy as hell... just saying. |
The
kills are fairly tame in that we don’t see a lot of blood. But there is a disturbing
twist to them in the fact that the demon causes the victims to commit suicide.
Seeing the character go slack jawed and dead eyed while looking for ways to
kill themselves is… well I can’t think of a better word than disturbing. The
individual actors do a wonderful job selling these scenes as well as being
terrified once they realize they are about to watch their friends off
themselves. This is one of those rare movies that had kills that bugged me, in
a good way, without being over the top gory. Well done guys.
Finding
a movie like Head Count makes me want to keep picking stuff at random to watch.
If you like this idea and want to try it yourself be warned that it normally
doesn’t work out this well. That said I think you should check this one out,
consider it highly recommended.
© Copyright 2020
John Shatzer