Just Before Dawn

Who Goes There?

Summer is on its way to a close and I normally annually watch Just Before Dawn so why not tonight? I have been reading some reviews and as expected--because people like me, watching the movie for the first time, in 2005, watched the much appreciated Shriek Show release and were blown away by what we saw, telling anyone who would listen to see it--many of those who checked it out consider such praise as overrated. I wasn't looking for a slasher in the woods, but was expecting it to tell you the truth, and got a little something extra. I admire a film that wants to establish atmosphere and something beyond butchered young adults/teenagers in the wilderness. I want that I can just watch the awesomely awful Don't Go Into the Woods....Alone!!!! (thank you, Code Red for that release, by the way, because it was a lot of fun despite its ability to rot the brain and deteriorate the IQs of anyone who watches).

Peekaboo

You know, the film doesn't have a lot of bloodshed. If you happen across this minor blog entry about it, I'm telling you, this movie IS NOT about the gore. There's no sex, although Jamie Rose, the wild redhead (I love redheads), shows some tits. You know her fate at the hands of the pot-bellied hillbilly wacko is never shown, but it has always left me unsettled...no one should have to go out like that (left to our imagination, what happens to her is rather a horrifying thought).

Ultimately, I like how the film establishes how a person/persons can change when faced with unexpected horror, the loss of friends, being pursued by machete-wielding (and these machetes have jagged blades, certainly leaving me rather uncomfortable when a victim receives a "crotch shot") killers, and not knowing what lies in wait within the darkness of the woods. I have read reviews that proclaim the film as uneventful, not particularly suspenseful, and not worthy of its hype. It's thankfully different. I tire of films reminiscent of Friday the 13th. This film was actually considered a Friday the 13th type film, but it really isn't. I do think director Lieberman was going for a variation on Deliverance. The kids encounter backwoods family with a Pa who inbreeds. I think Lieberman cast the part of Pa well because he speaks in one/two words, abruptly cuts people off, is evasive, says little when anything comes out of his tight-lipped mouth, and seems to wear his shotgun on his person as if it were a part of his wardrobe. I think Lieberman establishes here that Pa has kept it in the family so long and holds his kids/lovers under such control, that it is no wonder some of the offspring would get a bit loony and psychotic.

Demons

I never thought the young adults were a poor lot; instead I rather liked them. It was the case where they just wanted to camp in the woods, enjoy the scenery, and have some fun. Nothing wrong with that. Sure, they may react a little uncomfortably to park ranger George Kennedy or a rather out-of-his-mind Mike Kellin (who kind of has a reason for falling off the deep end) who try to warn them of how the mountain could produce danger (demons; the devils; whatever you want to name the terrors that will befall our group).

A lot has already been written about how Deborah Benson transforms over the running time, especially in relation to her beau, Gregg Henry, her behavior at first vulnerable and seeking her man's strength and protective embrace, later the one who offers him protection, saving his hide. Funny seeing Henry unable to accept his pals were dead, stuck in denial, while Benson tells him that they are gone, looking hauntingly into the darkened wilderness, listening to the whistling (I always felt this was perhaps the killers' ways of communicating to each other, but it could simply be birds of some sort living in the wilderness without a care in the world), knowing that she'll have to defend herself against the menace who took the lives of her friends. Henry eventually collapses into her bosom, finally realizing they are the only ones who will be leaving *his woods* (by deed) alive.

Kennedy seems like the one with his head firmly on his shoulders, understanding what the mountains might produce to the unexpected, but he's a little eccentric himself, the way he talks to his horse and plants (he's all alone, so it does kind of make sense that he would develop relationships with things that cannot talk back). He is a voice of reason, someone who has been around a while and probably lived a full life before becoming park ranger in the deep Oregonian woods.

I just love the woods, especially as a location for horror; if done right, a rather mediocre story and characters can be salvaged just by what surrounds them. I miss the way movies used to look on real film, especially the low budget ones that seem to capture a setting, story, characters, action with a level of mood and sinister that steadicam (irony that steadi is used to describe cameras that shake and jerk, providing audiences with potential nausea and almost certain trip to the john to vomit) digital just doesn't quite accomplish. Brad Fiedel's score and the look and feel of the film both keep me coming to this film. I think these are ultimately the qualities that has me return to the movie, although Benson's performance also is a treat to view over again as well. That scene where she chokes the rotund psycho with her fist, her legs vice-gripping his waist, very unique and original...if not also bizarre and rather surreal. That shot of the distant sun just above the Oregonian wilderness, Fiedel's score epitomizing how ominous serenity might be, Just Before Dawn is a movie I think that lives up to its reputation among the more rabid of us who derive its fanbase. That whistle should be just as iconic as Jason's "Mama's Call", and perhaps is to a lot of this movie's fans.