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55%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #7,129
...out of 20,875 movies
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Ronald Perkins builds an army of 14 people brainwashed through cult-like methods to protect him from his parents' killers. When Perkins is imprisoned, the police unwittingly unleash his followers on a small town and they've only got one thing on their mind: "Kill for Mr. Perkins."
--TMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: October 27, 2012
For the four years that it ran, the After Dark Horrorfest has been extremely inconsistent from movie to movie, but you can pretty much bet each year would have one or two hits among a whole bunch of misses. This is the only movie I've seen from the third festival, but I'm already willing to bet it's one of the best from that year.
Ten years prior, the quiet town of Stone Cove was rocked by fourteen kidnappings. The final child taken was Kyle Hopper, the son of local police officer Dwayne. The abduction absolutely crippled the man, and over the ensuing decade, his depression alienates him from his wife and daughter. On the anniversary of his son's abduction, he's forced to babysit the night's jailbirds, including prostitute Felicity who's essentially a main fixture at the station and a pharmacist named Ronald Perkins. Mr. Perkins proves to be something of a strange bird, demanding that Hopper call the local judge, who he claims is a friend and will let him out. This isn't exactly SOP and the cop starts to probe a little deeper into the man and begins too find a shitload of inconsistencies. Inconsistencies that begin to point towards those kidnappings so many years ago. Which begs the question, what happened to those kids?
When I first found out about Perkins' 14, it sounded like it was a new take on the Charles Manson mentality. I thought the focus would be on the titular group, with Perkins as something of a twisted protagonist. Turns out, that's not the case at all. The first act of the film follows Hopper's investigation into the strange Perkins and the distanced relationship with his family. When those fourteen do get involved in the latter half the pace takes off running; you see, Perkins has been treating them with a steady regiment of PCP, a drug that famously gives users superhuman strength and pain tolerance while destroying higher brain function. Naturally, by this point they're basically feral beasts, and this small town is powerless to stop their rampage.
On both sides of the table, Perkins 14 fires on all cylinders. While the first half had plenty of risk to drag on for forty-five minutes until things got rolling, Singer handled it beautifully. With a combination of great characters and ramping the tension through the roof, I was loving the flick long before he let the psychos out and about. And then once he did, he was smart enough not to trade the suspense for cheap scares. OK, maybe the effects of the PCP were a little exaggerated (I'm fairly certain the drug doesn't make you bullet proof), but it still stands with feet firmly on the ground, and the intensity doesn't drop. Tack on a brutally noir, if predictable, ending and we have a great horror run from opening credits to closing.
On top of all that, the assembled cast also went a long way in making this movie such a success. Leading man Patrick O'Kane excels as Hopper, handling the early seesawing between despair and desperation wonderfully, and doesn't miss a beat switching to a fairly realistic badass when the shit hits the fan. He's not exactly the all-guns-blazing type badass, but he's certainly competent enough that you'd feel a lot better with him alongside you in a situation like this. Plus, he's got a great chemistry with Richard Brake, who's just as good as Perkins. Hell, that slimy, shit-eating grin alone sold the entire character. Capping it off is none other than Michale Graves (of Misfits reunion fame) as Daisy's boyfriend, who showed he could actually have a decent career in front of the camera if he wanted to.
Even though Perkins' 14 is nothing like what I thought it would be, I still enjoyed it just as much as I was expecting to. Can't argue with that. Highly recommended. 9/10.
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