Rating: 2 / 5
I guess if you read the synopsis of Hard Ride to Hell, it sounds pretty interesting. Sort of. But the main thing for me was Katharine Isabelle. I've always loved her, and I love seeing her in whatever I can. It's an okay story, with okay characters and actors. It's safe to say that everything about it was just so-so. It wasn't all that bad, and it did keep me intrigued, but somehow it failed to completely impress me.
It starts off as any typical horror movie does: a group of friends taking a camping trip in their RV. They're on their way to do something for Habitat for Humanity, though it's never really clear exactly what it is. A couple of them have a little sob story going for them, making it kind of easy for us to care about them. They stop at some campground (which is actually just an open field with a sign that says "campground.") to have some rest before the rest of their journey. When one of them gets drunk, can't wait for his girlfriend to get out of the bathroom and decides to go take a piss in the woods, things turn sour. He meets up with a snake, almost pisses himself again and starts running for his life. He, of course, gets lost. He ends up finding a group of bikers in the midst of some sacrificial ritual. He starts recording it on his phone, and then his worried friends try to contact him via the walkie talkie he forgot he had. The bikers hear it, and they go after them. From there, their little camping trip turns into a nightmare.
It turns out that the leader of this biker gang is an immortal satanist who used to be a priest. He's been going at it for at least seventy years, we know, maybe longer. He's trying to find a woman who can carry his child, which is conceived by fire or something. That baby will also be the anti-christ. When he meets Tessa, the woman who recently had a miscarriage and will do anything to have a child, he thinks that she might be the one. He impregnates her, and like, three hours later, the anti-christ is born.
The movie consists mostly of people getting bitten (because the satanic bikers are also cannibals; that's apparently what you've got to do in order to become immortal by way of satanism), a bunch of knife fights, and some mumbo jumbo that no one understands. Most of the characters were impossible to care about (including Katharine Isabelle, I'm sad to say), and the part of Tessa was played by Laura Mennell. I've only seen her in Hell's Gate: 11:11, but I didn't really enjoy her all that much. Or that movie. Her part here was pretty much the same: dull, dull, dull. That was until she became impregnated by a demon seed. She turned a little creepy, and I liked that bit. But the knife fights were kind of weird, and there really wasn't all that much to it. I have to give it some props, though, because it didn't bore me at all. I was interested the entire time, but I honestly can't tell you why. In the end, I wasn't entirely impressed by the movie. The material was good, and I think it could have made a wonderful movie if it was gone about in the right way. I think they should have went the comical route, because that at least would have given it a more lasting impression.
Rating
Storyline - 7 points. It was okay, though not completely original. The introduction of the cannibal bikers made it into something I'd never seen, so I'll give it some points for that. But overall, it failed to leave a mark.
Characters - 4 points. I liked the two main characters, mostly because I felt bad for their situation. But they hardly ever even interacted with one another, so it was difficult to feel any love between them. And the other characters were only filler. I was disappointed, since they had one of my favorite actresses available, but they did nothing with her. Oh, and the bikers. Their leader, Jefe, was okay. But the rest were far too comical for a movie that was otherwise not comical at all. They looked like they belonged in a Troma movie, which didn't fit here.
Gore - 5 points. There were plenty of knife fights and cannibals biting chunks out of people, but there really wasn't all that much blood present. Shame.
Scariness - 1 point. The scenes after Tessa was impregnated and possessed might scare small children. Might.
Cinematography - 5 points. It looked like someone had at least a little idea of what they were doing. It didn't look like a home movie, but it wasn't mind-blowing either. So-so, like everything else here.
Overall score - 22 / 50
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