The Watermen (2011)

THE WATERMEN is one of the most terrible of slasher films: one of those films that's completely fake from beginning to end. The awful script was written by somebody with a tin ear who just has no feel for proper, realistic dialogue; what we get instead are insults traded between a group of jerks, the kind of characters who can't die quickly enough.The storyline is predictable in the extreme and not dissimilar to the similar Icelandic flick, HARPOON. A group of annoying youths take a boat out into the water, only to find themselves subjected to sabotage. They're subsequently rescued by the crew of a fishing boat who turn out to have less than charitable intentions.The appalling Jason Mewes unfortunately plays the horrid leading character, who gets way too much screen time. He's surrounded by fat, ageing guys playing the villains and various silicon-enhanced bimbos (who spend their entire time parading around in and out of bikinis) as his associates. The gore, when it comes, is entirely lacking and the film as a whole stinks to high heaven. You have been warned.

While it's always weird saying that you enjoy a movie with torture in it (it's only a movie I know), this one easily can be called a torture itself. There are almost no redeeming factors at all. Even if you are a Jason Mewes fan, you will wish he goes back to Kevin Smith (or vice versa) and they start making movies together again. Let's just say his output alone has not really got me excited.But it would be unfair to put this all on his shoulders. He is trying, though even he can't help but burst out sentences that not only make no sense, but are completely insane. Some nudity and some good (not that many though) blood effects will not cover the mess up that this movie leaves behind. And I don't think the end will surprise. It shouldn't

The Watermen is essentially a cabin in the woods film - a group of teenagers / students / young people stuck in some backwoods and subjected to slaughter by a group of hillbillies / mutants / whatever. In this case, the mutants are fishermen, the backwoods are swamps, and the slaughter is in order to mince the victims for fish bait.The good news is that there are places where this is done with some style (particularly some of the night photography on the water), the girls are pretty (albeit one of them is obviously and unattractively enhanced), and there are the sort of horror / slasher shenanigans we expect.The not such good news is rather more extensive. The acting is poor, the film takes forever to get going, the baddies are incomprehensible (and, as usual, almost unkillable), the victims behave unbelievably (as usual, decking someone who is trying to kill them and then immediately turning their back on them, to name but one), and the violence is fairly sadistic. And the whole thing is utterly predictable.So this is not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is not without any merit at all.

I don't understand exactly why this was entered into Frightfest, it seems pretty sub-par.Anyways, some young adults, possibly on a fishing expedition, when suddenly their boat breaks down and they get attacked by...Actually, that's probably why I couldn't enjoy the film much. Its quite generic disguised by superficial aspects - broken down boat rather than having a broken down car, villains who grind people into chum instead of the somewhat common villains selling their kills as snuff films, and actually, some elements are unchanged, like strange locals.The teen characters meanwhile are quite generic with only minor traits differentiating them (one brother detests people who pollute the ocean, the other doesn't really care), and some weren't very capable when under attack, one even standing "helplessly", despite being armed.