Mickey Keating is trying his best to singlehandedly carry the mantle of the ’70s grindhouse horror tradition. From Pod to Darling and now Carnage Park, his love for psychological thrillers, pulp horror and gore is unmistakable. And his output is near-constant these days. Pod was released theatrically last August and Darling not three months ago. Hot on Darling‘s tail comes Carnage Park, a gory genre piece set in the extreme heat and isolation of the unforgiving desert. As ever, Keating still operates in clichés and revels in horror tropes, but Carnage Park is a no less enjoyable nod to the grisly heights of ’70s pulp flicks.
One thing that Carnage Park has over Darling is action. While the latter dealt in the psychological, Carnage Park is a certified gore-fest and—depending on how much stock you put on narrative in your gore-fests—offers little more than 90 minutes of terror and foreboding. While it may be light on plot, Keating’s script does open with some memorable characters. Bank robber Scorpion Joe (James Landry Hébert) and his worse-for-wear partner, Lenny (Michael Villar), speed down the highway, which is empty except for the police cruiser hot on their tail. Although Scorpion Joe is savvy enough to shake the law, he’s no match for the fatal bullet in Lenny’s gut. And it is a big gut. If he’s going to dump the body and continue into the desert with his briefcase of money, he’ll need a hand. Conveniently enough, he has a hostage stowed in the trunk. Vivian (Ashley Bell) gives a few tugs on Lenny until he rolls out of the car, but she proves herself more than a handful when she punches Scorpion Joe and makes a run for it.
While the story, style and spirit of the 1978-set Carnage Park apes genre movies of the period along with contemporary filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez who bank on their ’70s homages, the movie’s best moments highlight Keating’s gory humor. Scorpion Joe may subdue his hostage, but he ends up lost in the desert under fire from a vigilante sniper. The irony of a deranged criminal being mercilessly shot down by another deranged criminal is certainly not lost on Carnage Park. Nor is the sick irony of Vivian’s subsequent “freedom,” no longer held by robbers yet still handcuffed to a corpse whose face has been unceremoniously blown off.
The bulk of Keating’s gore-fest, though, revolves around deranged ex-military sniper, Wyatt Moss (Pat Healy), who treats his beloved Carnage Park like a playground and hunts stray humans for sport. Local law enforcement doesn’t pose much of a threat, considering Wyatt’s brother is the sheriff (Alan Ruck). Contrary to what you might expect, this section of the movie is increasingly spare. Vivian may be a farm girl who started out her day determined to get a loan, but she has now been kidnapped, tied up and almost killed by multiple people. She’s determined to survive, but we glean that more from the number of set-pieces where she narrowly evades Wyatt than any true characterization at work in the script. And Wyatt himself is explained to little satisfaction. He’s simply crazy, a gun-toting berserker who occasionally proclaims things about the Lord and justice.
Carnage Park maintains all of the hallmark characters and tropes of ’70s horror but offers little in the way of originality or invention. But that’s been the case with most of Keating’s efforts. He focuses more on recapturing a look and a tone than on crafting a distinct story. At this point, Keating shows great talent for genre motifs and visuals but lacks any desire to elevate his work from mere imitation.
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