Ain't No Mouse Making that Noise: A Crack in the Floor (2001)

A Crack in the Floor (2001)

Rating: **

Starring: Mario Lopez, Gary Busey, Bo Hopkins

Barely anything new, A Crack in the Floor is a slasher. Period.

I should give out more details about this film but the thing is, there really isn't anything new to talk about from this one; the story is basic slasher film template, starting off with a raped and murdered mother 33 years ago, whose life of isolation out in the woods leaves her young son with nowhere else to go. With this upbringing mixed in with the fact he witnessed the murder firsthand, the child grows up into a homicidal hermit living underneath the floorboards of his cabin, murdering any trespassers that walk into his home.

Cue in the present, where six teens are driving to the same cabin for some R&R, meeting along the way Gary Busey as a some random guy working at a gas and fried chicken stop. As usual, by the time these kids get to the cabin, the hermit begins to kill them off one by one just when everybody is settling in around a campfire.

With little to no blood to show and a pacing so tedious, A Crack in the Floor could have been an easily forgettable everyday teen horror that can be easily replaced with another of its kind. Type-cast teens and every slasher film cliché ticked off in the list, A Crack in the Floor lost me by the time these teenagers reach the cabin, which was nearly an hour by then with almost nothing happening. 

And yet, the sort-off looming and melancholic atmosphere of the film tied me into finishing it, even if I find the ending quite odd as it renders every development the story made so far utterly pointless. The film also looked fairly produced as you wouldn't ponder about its low-budget until you noticed the lack of any real plot. Plus I like the fact that we never really see what the killer looked like as an adult; not sure if it's meant to make him more intimidating but either-ways, least the guy is decent enough to keep himself silent and sort of well-dressed. (Dig the pioneer-timey clothing)

The efforts A Crack in the Floor made to provide us everything a slasher film must do to entertain is surely respectable, but it can't hide that it's very uninspired. Makes a good timewaster if you got nothing better to do, though.

Bodycount:

1 female had her throat cut with broken bottle

1 male and 1 female hacked to death with pickaxe

1 male pitchforked on the gut

1 female had her neck broken

1 male gets a throat cut with knife

1 female killed offscreen

1 female gets a thrown pickaxe to her back

1 male dropped face first to an animal trap, head crushed

2 males hacked to death with pickaxe

Total: 11