Off The Beaten Path: The Shortcut (2009)

The Shortcut (2009)

Rating: **

Starring: Katrina Bowden, Jeremy Bastian, Cavan Cunningham

Here's a fun fact for ya! Comedian Adam Sandler's TV and movie production company Happy Madison once attempted to branch out into making horror films through an off-shoot aptly called Scary Madison and the first movie made under this studio, The Shortcut (2009), also happens to be its last thanks to the title's critical and commercial failure. But is it really that bad? Bad enough to single-handedly kill off its producer's foray into horror projects?   

The film opens in 1945, at a small town's Homecoming dance where we see teenager Ivor Hartley walking his date through a shortcut in the woods wherein things get pretty dark as he gets too handsy and attempts to rape her. She got a lucky shot kneeing him in the tenders which sends the would-be rapist stumbling home, only for the poor gal to find out trouble is far from over for her when a kid shows up to beat her with a rock and kills her with a slingshot.

Cut forward to the present and we now follow Derek, a regular teen boy two months into a new town with his family yet already starting some drama by quitting the school's rowing crew because he sees most of his teammates as pricks. His younger brother Tobey also got himself into a little misadventure when he accepted a dare from his friends to walk through 'The Shortcut', a fenced-off private forest path where over the years, kids and pets have been disappearing, and from there he finds a mutilated dog and an angry old man waving a shovel at him promising bloodshed should he ever find the tyke in his land again. 

Word of what happened to Tobey got around school and Derek finds himself roped deeper into the situation when a jock named Taylor brought up his missing dog and he believes the old man may have something to do with it. After a night of sneaking around the private land and learning that the old coot not only has a tin can full of name tags from missing pets, but is also a tad nutty up there, Derek and Taylor, along with Derek's friends Mark and Lisa, as well as Christy, the girl our lead guy's trying to swoon here and there, plan to break into the old man's property to gather more proof of his supposed pet-killing savagery.

All the while, we're treated with flashbacks of the killer kid in the opening act, which turns out to be Ivor's own little brother whose aggression scale is starting to scare local elementary schools into suggesting to his family, The Hartleys, that he's better off locked up in a loonie bin. We see over the years that, yes, the kid is indeed psycho and the Hartleys, big shots around the small town, done all they could to prevent the fact that one of their kids is a mad murderer from coming out. Could this killer kid be the crazy oldster in the present? Or is there something more sinister at play here?

Written by Adam Sandler's brother Scott and Happy Madison's development officer Dan Hannon, The Shortcut's original draft was said to be more gruesome until rewrites were done as the movie's distributor Leomax was only interested in releasing a more PG-13 horror outing. The resulting story is more akin to a slightly mature Are You Afraid of The Dark episode in turn, with a plot very much following an undoubtedly familiar pattern of the main casts investigating a suspicious figure believed to be responsible for some horrible deeds, only to find a twist which welcomes in the climactic last act. (And maybe another twist or two) Still, as uninspired as The Shortcut mostly is, it's far from terrible since I do dig the writing's stronger focus on mystery and character building, which is frankly this movie's far more acceptable elements long with the direction, pacing and the talents involved. The killings, though with little to no gore at all, still has their decent suspenseful build-ups and the gnarly special effects done for a few of them are passable at least.

The Shortcut (2009), in all fairness, is a decent-enough flick, though the lack of edge and flair in its story kept it from being more enjoyable as a slasher flick. Then again, it could be worse and the least PG-13 horror movies like this could do is be interesting and, on a level, this one done enough good to be worth its while.

 

Bodycount:

1 female beaten with a rock, killed with a slingshot

1 male seen dead with a head wound (flashback)

1 male shot with a shotgun (flashback)

1 male brained with a sledgehammer

1 male had his head bashed with a sledgehammer

1 female had her neck crushed with a length of chain

1 male shot with a shotgun

1 male shot through the head with a shotgun

1 female stabbed in the back with a carving knife

Total: 9