THE CURSE OF BUCKOUT ROAD (2017)

Studio:       Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Matthew Currie Holmes
Writer:       Matthew Currie Holmes, Shahin Chandrajoma, Johnny Passucci
Producer:  John Gillespie
Stars:     Evan Ross, Henry Czerny, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, Danny Glover, Mako Nguyen, Jim Watson, Kyle Mac, Patrick Garrow, John Ralston, David Hayter, Michelle Mylett, Colm Feore

Review Score:

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Summary:

Three urban legends related to the most haunted road in America connect five people with a curse driving them to suicide.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Professor Stephanie Hancock assigns her class a project on the creation and destruction of urban legends. Student Cleo Harris partners with fraternal twins Erik and Derek Ganzer to produce a video detailing three stories about Buckout Road in New York, which is rumored to be the most haunted road in America.

Cleo recounts that in 1852, a farmhouse belonging to slave owner John Buckhout stood along the road. John reportedly went mad with jealousy and beat his pregnant wife Mary under suspicion that she had an affair with a slave. Mary miscarried, then killed her husband in self-defense before hanging herself out of despair. Mary is now said to return at night carrying a lantern with which she lures lost travelers to their doom.

Erik and Derek cover the rumor of flesh-eating albino twins who lived in the area in the 1970s. Legend has it that if you dare to park your car and honk the horn three times, the albinos will come to eat you.

Cleo additionally mentions three witches being burned at the stake near the road in 1650. Three X’s mark where the women died. Paranormal phenomena is said to afflict those who pass over those spots at a certain time of night.

Cleo, Erik, and Derek end their video by mentioning how facts disprove all of the preceding stories as possible. They conclude that none of the legends are real.

Stephanie begins sleepwalking and having recurring nightmares of hanging herself from a tree on Buckout Road, which concerns her husband. Stephanie consults psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Powell, claiming she believes she is being driven to commit suicide just like Mary Buckhout.

Stephanie ends up killing herself exactly as depicted in her nightmare. Lawrence consults with longtime friend Detective Roy Harris, who investigates Stephanie’s death for the Valhalla PD.

On leave from military duty, Lawrence’s grandson Aaron arrives to stay with Lawrence in White Plains. The two men renew their contentious relationship stemming from Aaron’s troubled past.

Cleo, who is Detective Roy Harris’ daughter, consults Lawrence about a recurring nightmare of being burned at the stake. After her session in Lawrence’s home, Cleo meets Aaron and the two of them take a mutual interest in one another.

Lawrence goes to see Roy at the police station just as Roy returns with Erik and Derek Ganzer in custody. Having found the twins sleeping underneath the hanging tree at the Buckout Road crime scene, Roy questions them with Lawrence present. The twins claim they had the same dream about being killed by the albinos in the 1970s and inexplicably woke up under the tree, presumably after sleepwalking.

Connecting Buckout Road as the link between all three cases, Lawrence drives to see Cleo. Meanwhile, Aaron dreams of all three Buckout Road legends. Aaron is woken by a call from Roy informing him that his grandfather was killed in a car crash on Buckout Road.

Aaron meditates at a local church where Lawrence once worked as a pastor before losing his faith and becoming a psychiatrist. Aaron meets Reverend Mike Reagan.

Aaron returns home to find Cleo, Erik, and Derek rifling through Lawrence’s office. To calm him down regarding the break-in, Cleo shows Aaron their class project video. Afterward, Cleo and the twins explain their nightmares, claiming they are cursed and being driven to suicide just like their professor. Cleo adds that they broke in hoping to find something in Lawrence’s records that might help them. Aaron dismisses their claims and angrily kicks everyone out.

A vision of his dead grandfather causes Aaron to fall. Aaron is knocked unconscious when his head hits the bathroom sink. Aaron has a nightmare of various people committing suicide, culminating in John Buckhout attacking his wife before telling Aaron he is next.

Aaron goes to see Cleo. He tells her about his dream and asks to know everything about Buckout Road. Cleo calls in Erik and Derek, who retrieve an unofficial record of Westchester County history. The book mentions Alse Young, who was known as the “Woman of Windsor” and was hanged in Hartford, becoming the first recorded instance of execution for witchcraft in America. The book reveals that Alse was from Westchester. Following her execution, a group of vigilantes rounded up her parents and three sisters. After a tribunal conducted by Councilor Jonathan Black, the five family members were burned at the stake along Buckout Road. The book goes on to reveal that the surrounding land was cursed and the road was known as “Devil’s Path.”

Roy becomes upset when he finds Cleo consorting with the twins as well as Aaron, but insists everyone stay for dinner. In an effort to warn his daughter that Aaron is unstable, Roy reveals that Aaron once burned down his grandfather’s home when he was a juvenile.

Cleo follows Aaron home. Aaron confesses that following his parents’ deaths, he burned family photos in frustration, but the fire got out of control and nearly killed the neighbor who rescued him. Cleo confides that her own mother committed suicide five years earlier.

Aaron and Cleo fall asleep together on Aaron’s couch. When Aaron wakes from more nightmares, he finds Cleo trying to start a fire outside while sleepwalking.

Aaron returns to Reverend Mike, who reveals that the church was specifically built as a sanctuary from the cursed land around Buckout Road. Mike briefly shows Aaron an archival tome whose legends cryptically reference a sigil branded on zealots called to serve the road, the devil demanding five sacrifices, spirits guiding the living, and sending Satan back to Hell.

Aaron encounters Roy on his way out of the church. Roy warns Aaron to stay away from Cleo.

While wearing his grandfather’s pastor cross, Aaron dreams of the albinos again. When he wakes, he calls Cleo to his house. The two of them race to Buckout Road, where they find Erik and Derek sleepwalking. However, Aaron and Cleo arrive too late to stop the twins from putting hand axes in each other’s heads.

The police process the crime scene. Roy warns that if Aaron doesn’t leave town, he will pin the deaths on him.

Aaron wakes from a dream of the witches burning. Realizing she is in danger, Aaron rushes to Cleo. Aaron wakes Cleo from a sleepwalking trance, but is arrested by Roy.

Upon his release from police custody the following morning, Aaron is once again warned to leave town. Aaron tells Cleo to meet him at the church that evening.

Aaron and Cleo sneak into the church archives hoping to learn more from the old book, but discover it missing. The couple instead finds Reverend Mike hanging dead in the corner.

Aaron tells Cleo that unlike her and the twins, he has control over himself while dreaming. Believing he can change what happens within the nightmares, he and Cleo go to Buckout Road and fall asleep under the hanging tree.

In his first dream, Aaron battles John Buckhout, which allows Mary Buckhout time to recover a shotgun and murder her husband. Mary still prepares to hang herself from a noose.

Aaron then finds himself with Cleo in a muscle car in the 1970s. Cleo honks the horn three times to summon the albinos. Aaron and Cleo kill both attackers, although they are unmasked as Erik and Derek.

Aaron next rescues Cleo from being burned at the stake by Jonathan Black. Aaron finally confronts the lady with the lantern and demands that she let Cleo go.

Cleo becomes herself in the dream. Cleo tells Aaron that she saw the truth, which revealed they misunderstood the myths. Cleo explains that the three witches weren’t putting a curse on Buckout Road. Rather, they were binding the evil that always existed there. In order to break the binding, the road requires five suicide sacrifices every five years. Cleo goes on to say that she now knows what they need to do when they wake, but a vigilante suddenly kills her.

Aaron wakes to find himself holding a knife over Cleo’s bleeding body. The police arrest him immediately.

Roy turns off the camera in the interrogation room. After revealing that Cleo survived, Roy contends that Aaron didn’t change anything. Roy further confesses that he is a guardian whose responsibility to the road is to ensure that the sacrifices go smoothly. Flashbacks show Roy’s involvement in the previous deaths, as well as burning the book in the church. Roy shows Aaron his sigil brand and adds that he had a hand in the death of Aaron’s parents 15 years earlier. Aaron lunges at Roy, prompting Detective Maitland to enter the room and pull Aaron away.

Aaron is committed to the Central New York Psychiatric Facility where he spends five years in a catatonic state. A branded orderly restrains Aaron to a bed and sedates him. Aaron dreams he is with Cleo and they fight the albino twins together.

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Review:

Apparently enough of them exist for there to be some contention over which spooky stretch of pavement deserves the title of “The Most Haunted Road in America.”  But Westchester County, New York residents will insist that dubious distinction should go to White Plains’ infamous Buckout Road.

Terror tales involving this supposedly sinister street are built from so much inconsistent bunk, bull, and baloney that one can find virtually any urban legend incorporated into its haunted history.  Honk your horn three times outside a house where serial killer Albert Fish reportedly resided and albinos will decorate their mailbox with your decapitated head.  Driving over the X’s marking where three witches burned four centuries ago is said to summon paranormal phenomena.  With a wide range of rumors involving suicides, ghosts, and cannibals, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear claims that the concrete was poured over an Indian burial ground too.

Writer/director Matthew Currie Holmes’ fictional film tries to give some shape to this smorgasbord of scary stories by connecting three of the most prominent legends to a curse on three college students.  As part of a class assignment on myth deconstruction, Cleo partners with two goofball twins for a video project where they debunk Buckout Road with the same cynical skepticism expressed above.  They don’t laugh long however, once they start sharing nightmares that are seemingly driving them to suicide.

The trio’s situation advances from startling to serious when their professor actually does hang herself on Buckout Road, exactly as an abused slave owner’s wife did over 150 years earlier.  Police detective Roy Harris, who happens to be Cleo’s father, thinks the old stories are as bogus as the suggestion that the curse is coming for the kids.  Pastor turned psychiatrist Dr. Lawrence Powell isn’t so sure.  He sees dreams of Buckout Road as the common connection in all three cases, sensing something supernatural might in fact be possible.

In the meantime, Lawrence has to deal with his estranged grandson Aaron, who recently returned from military service to renew his frosty relationship with grandpa.  Aaron faces his own crisis of faith, compounded when he meets Cleo and becomes wrapped up in her Buckout Road brouhaha.  Individual paths unite in their desire to unravel the mystery before it murders anyone else, provided cannibal albinos, witches, and the phantom lady with a lantern don’t lead everyone to their doom first.

Given how garbled the ‘true’ stories are, it’s unsurprising that “The Curse of Buckout Road” becomes a bit jumbled itself.  Sometimes cutting, sometimes fading to/from black, segue issues combine with curious scene order choices for an erratic rhythm where fiction doesn’t consistently flow smoothly.  Characters are introduced in scattered sequences.  Nonlinear hiccups hamstring how the first act establishes exposition.  Initial confusion regarding who and when fades quickly, though “Buckout Road” doesn’t ride the flattest path toward its destination.

It’s a minor catch-22 because filmmaker Matthew Currie Holmes plays with a cool idea to explore each Buckout Road legend in a unique subgenre style.  Faded film saturation and scratches put seventies slasher grooves into the albino cannibal flashbacks.  Costuming adds retro witchcraft flavor to the 1600s scenes.  Terrific textures lend a great deal of freshness to the film, although tonally, I can’t commend the effort for coming together as cohesively as would be ideal.  But I might be applying an unreasonable standard to a modestly budgeted indie production, so take that as a wish of wanting “The Curse of Buckout Road” to be better rather than a solid strike against it.

“Buckout Road” gets a boost from its capable cast, featuring faces either familiar or at least photogenic.  Scenes sometimes stutter, yet characters have depth to individual personalities permitting them to be intriguing beyond onscreen actions.  Dominique Provost-Chalkley is charming, Evan Ross is coolly sympathetic, and supporting players perform their parts in tune to the tempo, which skews comical in cases involving the twins, dramatic during family matters, or frightful when ghosts and gruesomeness come into play.

Danny Glover carries cards for SAG, AFTRA, and the union of actors of a certain age still trading on past pedigrees to various degrees of success.  I’m talking about that group of guys like Malcolm McDowell or Eric Roberts, whom you’re never sure what shadow of their former selves they will bring to a particular part: the award-caliber incarnation or the quick-paycheck day player.

Fortunately, “The Curse of Buckout Road” gets a good slice of Glover in a limited role.  My suspicion says Danny Glover doesn’t fully commit when tasked with B-movie monster ado.  Look at something like “Day of the Mummy” (review here) as evidence.  Here however, Glover gets a full serving of drama to dig into.  He seems specifically engaged in a stern parental figure scene where he plays consternation with composure that reads real, an example of how “Buckout Road’s” subtext shines when performers pull it out of scripted material.  Colm Feore does this terrifically in his two theologically thematic scenes too.

All the right pieces are on the board, e.g. blossoming romance, familial confrontations, dark horror hooks, etc.  Often, they’re simply plugged into bizarre places or in bizarre ways.  A different edit could streamline the movie into a cut more in step with a mainstream studio feature, which “Buckout Road” comes close to achieving in its current form.  A different ending could take the film further still.

A third act revelation is pretty awful, or at least presented awfully, with a Bond villain monologue, iffy epilogue, and screaming rock song over end credits constituting an underwhelming climax.  Several on-the-nose shots such as Aaron pausing as he steps off his bus, holding up a book cover so another person can comment on its contents, or the way Glover caresses his dusty cassock to inform us of his past profession similarly overdramatize some of the staging.

Yet even when the surrounding storyline loses momentum, individual moments involving each legend pick up the slack.  “The Curse of Buckout Road” bites off a lot, chewing most of it down with memorable vignettes and compelling characterizations, only allowing some of the excess to fall to the floor.  Stacked against the urban legends it is based on, “Buckout Road” is equally as entertaining as a creepy campfire tale, maybe even mildly more believable, as if that latter bit is hard to be.

Review Score:  65

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