The Raking

Yup, it's a low budget indie style movie. No it doesn't have all the bells and whistles you get with blockbusters. But it does a pretty good job with what it has. I am a hater of movies where the same guy writes, directs, and stars in it. So it was surprising that I kinda liked this one. The script is ok, the story flows. There were no extraneous plot lines to confuse the issue. The characters have backstories that make you like them, told through the movie, not all dumped at once. The acting is way better than these movies usually have. Not Oscar worthy but a big step above beginners. Well, the goth girl was a bit stilted. There were no continuity issues nor were there plot holes. There is one sex scene, at the beginning. It was well done and not * like. It was used to show the frowned upon relationship between a college student and the TA. It also gives us the tie in to the opening sequence and the boy who survived. It was done without shoving it in your face. The filming was also surprising. No shaky cam, weird angles, or bad transitions. It was shot at night but even the low light scenes were lit enough to see easily. The sound was even throughout and you could easily understand the dialogue. It opens with a couple in a car arguing about being lost, the guy finally pulls over, but it's in a bad spot. The boy, who's birthday it is, is saved by a passing driver. It moves to the present where we have the Teaching Assistant and student in her room, sex, they are in love. She's a bit bratty (but redeemed slightly later). Meet goth girl roommate. They have a final project to do about urban legends. Brat ropes TA into their group which included nerd boy (cutie). Goth girl's sister comes. All head to Joshua Tree for the Rake legend. Camping scene, Rake makes on screen appearance (you can actually see it, not just an indistinct blur. Car won't start (Brat left radio on and door open, ooops). Little sister is dragged off. The rest are rescued by a crazy local. At his house they're safe due to lots of lighting. Crazy's backstory, bro taken by Rake 30 years ago. Script does a good job of keeping things smart until the random car shows up. Here they get a case of the stupids and go outside, it works out but the stupids are contagious. Nerd goes to charge phone, it overloads the circuits, the lights go off, and things go down hill fast after that. I liked the little twist at the end. So as you can see, you get a standard horror movie done on a low budget. Overall it was an okay way to pass some time. As a bonus it didn't annoy the poop out of me.

Bad casting, bad lighting, bad acting. The only semi decent thing was the soundtrack.

Another one of the horror movies which use sex scenes over and over. Obviously the script is so bad, that they have to use them. Learn from the Korean movies, they can do without it. In first the first scene, the car cannot start. Temperature is cold, so this car wasn't running before. The student's car does not start,. Battery dead the teacher says. Then the starter button would not be lit either. This movie is full of crap.

Managed to get through this one. It takes a bit of time to get rolling and when it does, there's not much happening. The cell phone charger blowing the entire house out, leaving them with no power is absolutely ridiculous. And wtf are the breakers doing outside?? Acting is watchable but the store could've been way better.

First off, many comments point to the acting and SFX being amateur. I had no issue at all with the cast, the two female (uni room share) leads were both fine. Noah I really liked, played with innocence that totally suited the role. I wasn't so fussed on the Assistant Tutor and I loved the little sister. The creature was freaky, made me go goosebumpy. I, personally, would have kept it more hidden, maybe just ruby red shining eyes in the darkness. The story wss cool, hardly original, but had history and a little development. I might have made more of the child in the opening scene ... he loom scared but he could have been given a more prominent role. I don't remember any music, so it was probably missing or uninteresting.

Our film begins with a husband and wife driving along a dark and isolated road late at night. Hubby and the missus are arguing, you see, and out in the middle of nowhere, hubby decides that it would be a good idea to pull over to talk things out. While they're trying to sort things out, something brushed against their car with enough force to rock it. There is also the noise of something sharp that is raked against the metal exterior of their car. It is then revealed the hubby and the missus have a small child in the back seat of their fine automobile. Now, anyone with more than two functional brain cells would just take off. The car is in working order; there is virtually nothing to prevent hubby from simply driving away and getting his family out of there. Nothing except for hubby's sheer stupidity, of course. Tbis is a Grade Z monster movie, after all. Instead of driving off, protecting himself and his family, hubby gets out of the car to have a look see after the car is impacted again. As he walks around the car, he spots something that spooks him. Instead of getting into the car and driving away, he leans into the car asks the missus for a flashlight. She gives it to him, and hubby is soon thereafter dispatched by whatever it is that lurks outside of the car. Now, instead of heeding maternal instinct and driving away to protect their small child, the missus decides to get out of the car to see whom or what it was that did away with hubby. She finds the flashlight and picks it up. Instead of getting immediately back into the car to drive off and again, protect her only child, she looks around. Of course, she falls prey to whatever nabbed her hubby, leaving the small child in the backseat of the car to the care of some creature with scaly skin, huge hands, long fingers, and razor-sharp talking. The movie goes downhill from there. Watch at your own peril. You'll wish Mr. Talons would have clawed your eyes out after you've watched this utter piece of trash.

Heading out on a camping trip, a group of students researching a local internet legend finds themselves trapped in a nightmare as the creature they're supposedly hunting is real and begins stalking them through the area, forcing the group to band together in order to survive the trip. This here wasn't all that great of a creature feature. One of the main issues here is the fact that barely anything at all actually happens for large portions of the film's running time. This one takes way too long to get the group out to the grounds where the creature supposedly lurks as the continued usage of them arguing over what they plan to do on the trip or whether or not they're personal conflicts start getting involved in their mission which isn't in the slightest bit interesting. That it gets further interrupted by the need for the telling of ghost stories out in the middle of their camp really does manage to throw another big dull spot in the middle of the film that holds back it's pacing, and with the initial story being told at the hunters' lodge that takes forever to fully get spelled out for the others that drags out the tempo even more. This overall lack of action manages to reduce the amount of screentime the titular creature receives which manages to make it seem all the less frightening because it's not on-screen often enough to make an impression. There are some fine points on display because of the creature, but the film never gets the chance to really explore it due to the lack of screentime it gives to the monster which is quite short and barely worthwhile here as there are so many more scenes featuring them interacting with each other even after the film decides to announce the creatures' presence so early on here with an attack quite early on. That factor just makes the pacing that much more obvious here with it being obvious the creatures' out there from the beginning yet never delving into exploiting that factor as often as it could've which really does lower this one significantly. Coupled with a cheap-looking monster costume that heightens the low-budget experience, this one has a few problems that don't hold off its positives. There's not a whole lot to like here, which mainly comes from the setup of the creature and its fine backstory. The usage of the internet legend as a basis for the creature isn't a bad start, but it's not as well-known as other creatures which give it a unique and creative feeling that's explored here. As well, there's also the few rather fine action scenes here that get quite enjoyable, from the initial encounter in the campsite to the house encounters that are somewhat thrilling for their sense of gore and frenetic activity throughout which does make this enjoyable. Overall, though, it's not all that great. Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

I must admit that I was initially lured in by the movie's cover. Granted, I had never even heard about this 2017 movie prior to finding it by sheer random luck in 2019. And being a life-long horror fan, of course I sat down to watch "The Raking" as I was presented with a chance to do so. I managed to endure just a bit more than an hour of this movie from director Bryan Brewer before I gave up. The movie was rather monotonous and failed to properly captivate me. There was just something way too generic and mundane about the storyline which was reminiscent of the horror movies that permeated the horror scene in the 1990s. The one thing that the movie did manage to do well was the suspense with keeping the audience in the dark in terms of showing off the creatures and giving the audience information about what is really going on. But it just wasn't enough to make up for all the other shortcomings that the movie had from writers Bryan Brewer and Laura Greenman Heine. "The Raking" was a weak horror movie, and there are far better horror movies readily available. And it scores a mere three out of ten stars rating from me, because the movie didn't have an interesting storyline and the characters were just too bland. An ambitious project for sure, but you know when the director and writer also stars in the movie, then it is going to be one of those movies. Yeah, you know what I mean here.

THE RAKING is another waste of time indie horror outing in an ocean full of them. It's mostly a character-based drama with the occasional glimpse of a half-seen creature which doesn't inspire the viewer. The problem with this is that two thirds of the running time are filled with extraneous scenes which add nothing to the overall plot, and there's no actual horror content until the halfway point. The acting isn't the worst here but everything else is.

The film opens with a Mercedes running out of gas on a back desert road attacked by the creature (Alan Maxson in a costume). There is a child in the back. The adult names are George and Carla, perhaps a tribute to George Carlin. Later at college, a group of diverse white students and their TA, Ethan Cooper (Bryan Brewster, director, writer, producer and basically guy to blame or praise) do a school project on urban legends. They choose to go on a camping trip at Joshua Tree because there is a legend that something happens in the desert to people at the equinox and the fact that is the trendy spot for low budget slasher films. Add a salty guy (Marshal Hilton) in a monster truck who helps them and I think you got the idea. I will say the acting was better than most indie productions. Either Mr. Brewster has acting friends or decided to cast actors. The bar scene had the right amount of background noise, not using that canned crowded restaurant noise that never matches what is on the screen. I tend to notice dumb things like that and also one of the fast moving news articles claimed a "local Wichita boy" went missing. This is a Brain Damage film who started out making films too bad to watch. Apparently they learned from their errors and parlayed their earnings into better productions. Now many times directors place themselves into horror films, and where they die in the film is indicative of their ego.Just saying. Allie Rivera, co-producer played Jade,my favorite moody character contrasting Kennedy (Cree Kelly) and her own sister (Marisa Davila). A geek/nerd named Noah (Thatcher Robinson) rounds out the group. Now the film claimed the equinox is an annual event. Before you kids tell your teacher that, it is not. It comes twice a year, spring and fall which is why they are called the vernal equinox and autumnal equinox. I'll let you figure out which is which.I thought the ending was ill conceived. Guide: F-word. Sex. No nudity due to arm placement.