Lake Alice (2018)

LAKE TOMAHAWK. The Thomas family, plus daughter's boyfriend, take a festive vacation in Wisconsin. Here cops drink on duty, smoke whilst filling up at the gas station & the locals are generally pretty odd. After 45 minutes of wooden acting & very little else, at a knock on their cabin door, it finally turns into a horror (home invasion/slasher) movie. That's over half way through! Sadly it's all rather lame & cliché, plus a few day for night scenes are thrown in. I picked this up cheap from my local Asda store so can't grumble too much, but as a potential first time viewer you have been warned!

I love to watch horror flicks, but sadly 99% are really bad. This one is not only bad, but the acting and dialogue is so stupid you start to feel sorry for the actors.Right from the start I felt like the characters were badly defined, but I kept at it thinking it would get better. Sadly, it only got worse.I'm not sure how movies like this get the funding and actually make it to the theaters. Must be someone they know in Hollywood.The actors appeared out of place and distracted the whole way through this disaster. Every character looked like they couldn't understand what they were supposed to do. Almost like they were embarrassed by what they were saying and doing. Nothing in this made sense. The plot, the dialogue, even the reveal of who were the killers.I can't believe I even stayed to the very end to see a final "twist" because that didn't make much sense either.There were several good reviews for this, but they must have been people involved in the production because no one in their right mind would consider this anything more than a very poor student film. Almost laughable, but instead you feel pity for the actors.I wasn't going to write a review at first, but thought maybe I could save someone a few hours of wasted time. Take heed and stay away. The only horror is how bad it's done.

We rented this on Amazon and we liked it for the fact it was not just gore and bad acting in fact the acting was good and the gore good for the scenes needed at times. The feel of the film is cold and that works, I would have liked to have heard more creepy music but the tension was still there. I did like the characters especially the police officers (or should I say cops) they were fun and really messed with the family in this. The leads were good the daughter was a little weak at first but got much better towards the end and gave a solid performance. Some very smart twists the end we did like!! Overall a good holiday slasher with quality acting and good old fun for the Christmas holidays.

It's hard to know where to start with a film like this. There is so much I liked and at the same time so much I didn't. Let's start by saying this is not a well made film technically. The acting is dreadful, the camera work is shotty and the sound mixing is unbearably bad. There was clearly a pretty low budget in the works here so you just have to accept those things for what they are. On the other hand though 'Lake Alice' breathes some surprising life into the very very tired slasher genre.I love the fact that the film tries to be as unique and unexpected as it can possibly be. Too many films today are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and take a risk, and consequently come across bland and forgettable. You could never say 'Lake Alice' was afraid to think outside the square.As for the horror side of things there are actually a couple of genuinely well crafted scenes and scares. There are also some that fall completely flat, but you take the good with the bad. Without spoiling anything I'll say there is an ending that you will either absolutely love or absolutely hate. My opinion is that I love what they tried to do, but hated the execution with which they did it. Altogether though 'Lake Alice' was a far better experience than I expected going in, and it will put some big-budget horror films to shame based on innovation alone.