Summer Scars review by The Grim Ringler

Summer Scars

If adolescence isn't bad enough for kids, when you throw in a random misanthrope into the mix well, it just complicates things. Such is the case with SUMMER SCARS, a story of modern youth meeting timeless nutjob. Oh for the days when the woods were filled only with masked killers and not homeless weirdos.

SUMMER SCARS begins with kids being kids, or rather, with kids being young sociopaths. It is another beautiful day but for these kids, beauty is the last thing on their minds. Each of the teens makes sure to give the city they live in the finger in their own way, all of them converge on the nearby woods and their usual hangout. Everything is laughs for them when they get together, each taking turns on a moped one of them stole, laughs that is until an indigent man is run into on the trail. The two boys who run into the man make a break back for their friends, frightened they may have killed him, but not long after they arrive, so does the man, a bit shaken but alive and well. At first the stranger us kind, funny, and seems to treat the kids not as criminals but as friends. When some older teens show up to harass the kids the man even defends them but this is when things begin to get dangerous, when he pulls a gun on the other kids to scare them off. Then things change. The stranger decides it is time to teach the kids how to defend themselves, and how to fight back. Things are not so funny anymore and suddenly this isn't a game but is life and death, as the man's deep seated psychosis starts to show and it becomes unclear what he wants. For him this is still a game, but one in which losing may cost someone their life.

A surprisingly well made and well acted film, I was really taken aback at how good SUMMER SCARS was. It looks so much like a direct to video exploitation/horror film but it is a pretty darn good thriller with a fair share of LORD OF THE FLIES thrown in for measure. Here, these may be bad kids but when confronted with someone truly dangerous they see that they have only been up to games before, though they will soon lose what innocence remains. Not a lot of action, not a lot of blood, but a very good, very well made thriller that will surprise at every turn. The disc is decent, the film looks ok, and the sound is passable but you came for the movie, and that friends, is good.

...c...




7 out of 10 Jackasses
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