"Plasterhead" review

Plasterhead (2006)

Director: Kevin Higgins
Writer: Kevin Higgins

Kathryn Merry ... Maggie
Josh Macuga ... Steve
Ernest Dancy ... David
Raine Brown ... Audra
Gerard Adimando ... Sheriff Earl Taggart
Brandon Slagle ... Henry

A bunch of college students are heading to Miami for a vacation. They decide to take a shortcut through a small town because that’s what you do in horror movies. You always take the shortcut through the scariest backwoods town you can find. This particular stretch of West Virginia is the home of Plasterhead, a fiendish killer who lives out in the woods killing whoever is stupid enough to wander within arms length. The locals are convinced that a black trucker survived a vicious beating and evolved into the killing machine Plasterhead. Soon they will learn that they were right and that their sins have come back to haunt them with plaster on his head.

Is Plasterhead the new Candyman? The answer is an emphatic no. “Plasterhead” tries to take the “Candyman” approach by having a local myth come to life and terrorize the town. The problem is that the town consists of about three people and I didn’t care about any of them. The four jerks driving to Miami were begging to be slaughtered by their insistence on driving in circles around that hick town. But the main problem is that Plasterhead is a lumbering buffoon who couldn’t catch anyone yet somehow always manages to sneak up on people. Candyman could have ripped the plaster off his head in two seconds. Where is Tony Todd when we need him?

“Plasterhead” has a few interesting kill scenes but nothing to get too excited about. The real death blow with this movie is the pacing. Most of the runtime is eaten up by watching the students go back and forth on the merits of staying in town. They don’t even realize that there is a killer Plasterhead after them until about an hour into it and by then you’ve lost all interest. “Plasterhead” can be skipped.

SCORE: 1.5 out of 4 plaster mans