December 22, 2020
Review: 'Shortcut' Should Have Taken the Long Way Around
Kevin Taft READ TIME: 2 MIN.
A mixed bag of horror monster movie clich�s, the international co-production "Shortcut" takes a rag-tag group of teenagers and pits them against a monster after they take... you guessed it... a shortcut in their school bus.
While shot well, the script by Danielle Cosci doesn't add anything to the genre. There's adorable nice guy Nolan (Jack Kane), clown Karl (Zander Emiano), douchebag Reggie (Zak Sutcliffe), nice gal Bess (Sophie Jane Oliver), and nerdy, cute Queenie (Molly Dew). They are driven by good guy Joe (Terence Anderson) who, you know very well, will be the first to buy it. But he tells a riddle that plays into the final voice-over, which seems to be a nod to "The Breakfast Club" – which might be what the movie was modeled after.
Where the kids are actually coming from or going is never explained. It seems like a sort of out-of-the-way drive for a school day, and the kids are certainly not the best of friends. But when a downed tree makes the bus go a different way, an escaped convict hijacks the bus, they get trapped in a tunnel, and they discover that they better get awfully close in order to survive.
The creature that begins to attack them isn't really explained or all that scary. It's definitely a person in a suit working a mouth that likes to shriek a lot. But they do discover it doesn't like bright light so they are able to use that to their advantage. The problem is they are about to experience one of the "longest eclipses" in decades. The bigger problem is that this plot point is practically forgotten, and barely used to any advantage.
The actors – all unknowns to U.S. audiences at least – do the job and are generally appealing, but the script doesn't give them a heck of a lot to but sink into their "types" and interact.
To be fair, Allessio Liguori has a good eye, so the film has a cool look to it, but it needed a bigger budget, a better monster, and a script rewrite to convince audiences to take his shortcut.
"Shortcut" arrives on VOD and Blu-ray December 22nd.
