New Release Horror: The Horde

The Horde is released May 6th. Check out our early review, son. 

Let's keep this simple.  What do you get if somehow Rambo (the movie) and The Hills Have Eyes (the movie, more so the Alexandre Aja version) were to copulate and have a love child?  You guessed it!  The Horde!

The Horde stars and is also written by Paul Logan, famous for other gems such as Mega Piranha and Aliens on Crack, and also a star in the soap opera Days of our Lives.  He plays John Crenshaw, the ultimate badass apparently.  While Paul Logan has the physique and chiseled out face for the part, a three-hundred and fifty pound World of Warcraft addict with a lisp could have executed a more convincing performance.  It all just seemed so forced and synthetic that it really distracted me from some of the other lackluster performances in The Horde.

My face is so bad ass. 

However, Paul has help!  Enter Bill Moseley (House of a Thousand Corpses, The Devil's Rejects) and Costas Mandylor (Saw IV, Saw V, and Saw VI), two strong supporting actors who did do a fine job in keeping The Horde afloat with Costas having a bigger role and deliver like he always does in everything I has seen him in.Visually, The Horde is fantastic.  When the films wants to look beautiful it IS very beautiful, and when it wants to get ugly, it is VERY ugly.  There were some truly unsettling moments in The Horde that made me grit my teeth and turn away with my hand over my face.

However, towards the end of the first half an hour of this film, something really threw me for a curve ball.  Without a spoiler, I will just say that some people are in the woods in North America trying to observe an animal in a forest and the animal is clearly a Skinny Pig (a hairless Guinea Pig).  A little research if you don't mind:

Really? No. Really?

“Guinea pigs live in the wild in South America, living in rocky areas, grasslands and forest edges. They live in groups of about 10 adults, and live in burrows, either dug by themselves or by other animals. They are most active at night, when they come out and forage on a wide variety of plant materials.”  (cited from Omlet https://www.omlet.us/guide/guinea_pigs/guinea_pigs/history/)

Now, without this knowledge, I know for a fact that a Guinea Pigs, or even Skinny Pigs are not native to any forest in North America.  I also think that that is pretty common knowledge  So, how in the hell did the people making this movie think that that little detail would slip by unnoticed?  Maybe I am missing something here?  Was this some tip of the hat that I did not pick up on?

All in all, I just wasn't invested in the characters enough by the end of The Horde to really feel any satisfaction from the time invested.

Score

-Scott L. Lambert