Scream Parks and Recreation: Talon Falls (2017)

Talon Falls (2017)
Rating: *1/2
Starring:  Brad Bell, Fred Biggs, Lonnie Bloomburg

Based on an actual Halloween horror attraction, Talon Falls Scream Park, in Graves County, Kentucky, Talon Falls is a movie that blends classic slasher tropes with torture porn horror, bringing us the best of both worlds. Or at least it attempted to.

Standard group of teenagers for the killing?
Classic slasher set-up.

To simply put, the film follows two teen couples on their way to a cabin only to get sidetracked when, at a gas stop, an attendant told them about Talon Falls, a popular local scream park attraction. Despite the vocal protest of one of the girls, the gang drives on to the park and gets VIP passes from one of the people working at the park as some form of Southern hospitality seeing they're not from around there.

Not thinking much about any of this, the teens proceed to a haunted house attraction littered with spooky clowns and tortured victims. Of course, it isn't long before they become aware on just how real some of these horrors are and the group soon find themselves fighting to survive or die as a part of the park's sinister attractions and side business of snuff films.

Dirty room full of rust and blood-covered murder weapons?
Classic Tore Porn set-up!

So, we basically have a mix-matched monstrosity of a generic backwoods slasher and a low-rent torture porn, with a side of Turistas (2006) and Vacancy (2007) thrown in for good measure. How exactly does it hold up?

Honestly, the whole roundabout is pretty standard. It's literally the predictability and cliches of two horror sub-genres welded together in a sometimes-steady-sometimes-slow pacing that puts me to sleep on one end and got me sighing in boredom on the other. Granted that some of the torture scenes succeed in grossing me out (really really hate that toe nail torture) and the last act did got me slightly interested with its long yet passable chase scene, Talon Falls just felt cheap, so much so that its entire seventy-plus minute run felt like one overly long commercial promoting what kind of horror you can picture the real Talon Falls park will be doing for you once you put down that ticket money at their booths. It's moderately acted, hardly terrifying and barely exciting, done in a fair budget that is simply "okay".

Put two set-ups together and nothing else and you get:
A barely original horror movie for the rental bins.

I appreciate the effort, but it's an effort that's as stale as a bowl of plain-flavoured corn flakes that nobody wanted to eat coz, well, it's plain. With that, I leave Talon Falls to the rest of the world who may or may not want to take part of its cinematic blandness, as I indulge myself to something better. (And by better, I meant wasting a good near-two hours of my life re-watching Hostel: Part II (2007), a movie that I consider as the best example of a good torture porn next to Saw (2004). Not exactly productive but, hey, least it's something.)

Bodycount:
1 male electrocuted to death
1 male mauled to death by a dog
1 male tortured, had his head crushed with a vice
1 male and 1 female electrocuted to death
An entire dump full of corpses found
1 female presumably tortured to death
Total: 6+