Exeter (Movie Review)

Exeter is guilty of that most perplexing of horror sins: stuffing itself to the brim with grating, unlikeable characters who are summarily lined up like ducks in a carnival game. This can get you most of the way there if everything else is in working order, but for much of its first half Exeter feels like a rough draft--exploring a couple different premises before settling on one and moving on--and it’s an eyeroll of a movie from start to finish.

Any town that’s home to decrepit abandoned buildings is heaped with Cropsey-like lore (in my hometown we had a building that was once an orphanage and an asylum); in Exeter, the legend concerns a violent, decades-old scandal and cover-up involving illegitimate children and abusive clergy. I’m doing the movie a favor by being as vague as I am, because you can call many of the twists while the opening credits are still fading from the screen.

The characters in Exeter all feel carefully hand-crafted by people who have watched a lot of other crummy movies, but never talked to a fellow living human: there’s the good boy who wants to help his elders without breaking any rules, the tough-as-nails rebel girl who hugs her own knees a lot, the loud sidekick, the drug vacuum acquaintance who spends a lot of time passed out under a table, the ambiguously sinister priest, the angry ole hillbilly. After turning aforesaid abandoned building into a nightclub for a rockin’ party, the teenaged contingent of these stock characters find themselves trapped inside while an angry demon named Devon passes from one body to another.

The premise is flat and the twist is forgettable, but every so often the movie truly surprises with an inspired kill, joke, or jump--I imagine that somewhere in the list of writers and directors is one unfortunate, talented person who really needs to break away from the group and stretch his or her muscles elsewhere. When all’s said and done, Exeter is a by the numbers, phoned-in heap of scares that almost feels, like the slackers it features, sorta proud of how lazy it is.