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I picked up one of those $5 Walmart discs, the ones with multiple films. This was a horror edition, obviously, with four films. I figured they probably all sucked, but what the hell. You never know unless you take a chance. Salvage was the second one I watched, and right from the beginning I thought there might be something to it. It opens with a very Sam Raimi camera technique of sweeping along low to the ground, fast, occasionally raising up over obstacles, obviously in a salvage yard, until it bring us up to an axe and a poor, unsuspecting fool working on his truck. Then we get the title, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I was in for a treat. Turns out, I was. Read on.
| Claire Parker is having a bad day. She's just been paroled from her shitty counter job at a gas station/convenience store, and her laterally-mobile boyfriend, Jimmy, is late picking her up. When she finally sees his truck come up over the hill, some weird dude with a weirder smile is driving. He says his name is Duke, and he's a friend of Jimmy's from the salvage yard Jimmy works at. He drives her home, and to her credit Claire is just as unsure and nervous about this set-up as we in the audience are. Which proves to be more than simple paranoia when Duke barges into the house, drags her to the basement, and kills her ass dead. All pretty standard fare, shot well and maybe acted a notch or two above form for this type of outing. It was when Claire suddenly finds herself back at her register at work, in an apparent Groundhog Day scenario, that I sat up and took notice. Literally. I sat up on the couch and said, "What the fuck?" Out loud. That doesn't happen every day, people. |  Is that an axe in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? |
From there on, Claire is in a constant battle to keep reality in her sights. Things seem normal with her mom and hey boyfriend, but little touches seem out of place - such as the bizarre potruding spine of a community college classmate. She's just beginning to shake the dream off, and chalk up all the little boo scares and creeping uneasiness she has off to nerves when BAM! Duke shows up on her overnight shift at the store and chokes the living shit out of her. She pokes his eyes out, all Night of the Demons-style, and all Duke does is smile and walk away. When she calls the cops and they show her the security tape, wherein she is clearly shown fighting and being choked by absolutely no one, all sanity bets are off. She begins seeing Duke everywhere, being stalked by this ephemeral yet very menacing figure.  You're not going to be one of those stuck-up cunts, are you? | At some point in the proceedings Claire also begins to dream about Duke being hunted himself, this time by the very police that rebuffed her story of being attacked by him with titters and derision. This chase by the police winds up with Duke being cornered, uttering some truly crazy nonsense to the cops, and being shot point blank in the face. Which is impressively gruesome for a low budget film. So now the questions are: is Claire really dreaming or is she receiving psychic flashes; if Duke is dead how can he be stalking her still; is the whole thing just a dream itself; is Claire just straight-up crazy. In the intriguing manner which the film is shot and edited, these become very difficult to answer questions. Ultimately, Claire finds a newspaper article in the library about herself being missing, and Duke seems to be herding her towards a patch of ground out in a hay field where she saw him digging a hole earlier. She eventually finds the hole and - can you guess? Yeah, she's in it. Dead as a door nail. She also finds Jimmy hacked to pieces in the back of his own truck - still alive and trying to call out for her. |
And then there are the enormously creepy figures we see in the background of certain scenes. Figures shrouded in darkness opening their mouths unnaturally widely and voicing soundless screams. It had a very Tourist Trap feel to it, and lord knows that movie always makes me want to poop myself. Between them, Chris Ferry's gleefully sadistic portrayal of Duke, and Lauren Currie Smith's fantastic essaying of a frantic, confused woman, the movie really fires on all cylinders. The kind of random find that really makes me glad I take chances. The only real chink in the armor is one scene that we get which is totally from Jimmy's perspective. The whole movie to that point, and then beyond, is all Claire; even Duke's run-in with the cops is shown as her dream. To have this one switch is glaring, and it only serves to open a logic flaw in the story. | But pound for pound, The Crook Brothers have written and directed a really fine psychological horror film here. I'm not familiar with their other films, but I can tell you I'll be on the lookout for them. Some posters at the IMDb forums (I know I shouldn't read them, but I do) have said they figured the twist out early, and some finished the whole film and still couldn't figure it out. I fell somewhere in the middle. I had an idea of what was going on, but was still satisfied with the reveal. It actually reminds me a lot of another film, but I won't mention it here because it would be a spoiler if you've seen it. Either way, I don't get quite as affected by films as I did by Salvage very often, so I can recommend it with confidence. See it for the camera work, see it for the acting, see it for the twists, see it for the creepy images, see it for the impressive way Smith fills out her jeans, just see it. |  Ever have one of those day where you die over and over again? Yeah, me too. |
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