411mania.com: Movies - 31 Years, 31 Screams: Dark Ride

"There's nothing scarier than a clown after midnight," Lon Chaney once remarked. I guess the same can be said for carnivals. I don't know if it's the seedy, con-man nature of the carnies or the depravity of looking at deformed cow's heads, but there's just something about a carnival that gives me the creeps. I guess I'm not alone.

While films like Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse tapped that horror vein with great alacrity, the only thing scary about Dark Ride is how derivative it is while still taking itself seriously.

We open several years back with a pair of 13 year-old twins (Chelsea and Britney Coyle) taking the "dark ride" through the haunted house. They see the usual freaky mechanical scares, but one of them is very real. See, a psycho named Jonah (Dave Warden) lives in the haunted house ride, and he doesn't care for intruders. What he does to them is, apparently, not very nice because he's sent away to a mental institution for…wait for it…THE CRIMINALLY INSANE!

Fast-forward about fifteen years to Cathy (The Sopranos' Sigler) and Bill (character actor Renna) and Jim (Alex Solowitz) and Steve (Rogers) and Liz (Tisdale, who you all probably know from MTV's Undressed, but I know as being the older sister of Ashley Tisdale from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody -- what? I can't watch TV outside of HBO and Adult Swim?), five college students on their way to…wait for it…SPRING BREAAAAK!

It's all very 90210-ish with on-again/off-again lovers Cathy and Steve bickering about Steve's infidelity, and Bill trying to get laid like…well, a college student. Then we have Liz and Jim or "the slut" and "the stoner." That's the extent of their characterization. You want depth, go to Tennessee Williams.

Bill, the movie nerd, thinks it would be cool if they could save money on a hotel room and just, and get this, sleep in the old, haunted house ride at the carnival. See, this is what we in horror call "a bad idea." Everyone except Cathy thinks it's a fine idea, especially the whole money-saving aspect. See, that tips Cathy as "the final girl."

Coincidentally, budget cuts at the mental institution have apparently forced the Board of Directors to higher the stupidest, meanest asshole on the planet to care for Jonah because the dumbass starts taunting him with raw meat and calling him names. This is what we in horror call "a *very* bad idea." It's not long before Jonah breaks his restraints, kills the pair of male nurses and dons a mask that looks like Jason's hockey mask washed on "hot."

Jim, who, not surprisingly, is a little stoned, sees pretty hitchhiker, Jen (Bogart, who is the spitting image of Trishelle from The Real World.) along the road and decides to pick her up. You know, you don't even have to like horror movies to know that picking up a hitchhiker is never a good idea. The fact that she's dressed like Sherri Moon-Zombie from House of 1,000 Corpses doesn't seem to dissuade him.

Of course, picking up a hitchhiker isn't all bad, especially when they offer you some of their peyote buttons. So, after the desert coyote leads them into the carnival, they all decide to chill out and tell stories (except for Cathy, who thought the idea was dumb and decided to stay in the van…alone).

Bill relates the story of *this very carnival*, which was shut down due to the murders of the twins. Bill tells them that the media was bribed to report that the killer died – even though, during the opening credits, we see a newspaper clipping that says he was caught and sent to a mental institution. Bill certainly seems to know a lot about the case. See, it turns out that the twins were his cousins, and he wanted to see where they died to give him a sense of closure.

So, with all the victims helpfully locked in the funhouse (Cathy staying behind was just a ruse so she could play a prank on Steve because he cheated on her with some skank), Jonah begins the arduous task of dispatching them in every gruesome manner imaginable. At least Jim gets head from Jen before he goes. Then again, Jonah gets head from her too, but in the literal sense.

What's most disappointing about Dark Ride is the total lack of chances it takes with its storytelling. You ever see one of those housing developments where all the houses were built to exactly the same specifications? That's what Dark Ride is like. If Scream scribe Kevin Williamson took a handful of horror clichés, tossed them in a blender and hit puree, then Craig Singer and Robert Dean Klein took a handful and just left them out to go stale. The result is not a winking tribute to genre clichés, but just another ripoff. Jonah looks and sounds a lot like Jason Voorhees. Andrea Bogart's character is blatantly based on Baby Firefly from the Rob Zombie movies. Everyone else is just a generic type (the stoner, the slut, the geek), including Sigler.

Lack of characterization would be fine if they were actually doing something interesting, but they literally just walk around for a while before getting slaughtered. Sigler just looks bored, and she doesn't add much to the role outside of having a name actress. Bogart, on the other hand, looks right at home. A lot of people consider her an up-and-coming "scream queen", and it's not hard to see why because she's not at all embarrassed by the genre and actually, **GASP**, has fun with the role. She's rumored to be in the upcoming remake of April Fool's Day, so she'll be sticking around the genre for a while.

Director Craig Singer, who first came onto the scene with a Pulp Fiction-ish crime drama Dead Dogs Lie does an adequate job of staging all the stalking scenes, but that's all it is – adequate. In order to overcome a turgid script like this one, the suspense has to be ratcheted up. That doesn't happen here. The film just kind of…lays there.

The 411: If you're looking for a fresh dynamic take on the slasher genre, Dark Ride isn't it. Too many clichés and cardboard cut-out characters bog the film down, and neither the director nor the cast (with the exception of Andrea Bogart) step up to elevate it above your average direct-to-video stalk 'n' hack thriller. C

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