Upon sitting through all 89 minutes of "Eaters," I sat on my couch wallowing in my own shame as I watched the credits scroll down the screen not unlike the tears that cascaded down my face. I knew I wouldn't be able to regain the last hour-and-a-half of my life, but moreover I knew I'd have to live with the horrors of having seen "Eaters" forever.
I don't think I've ever given a movie zero stars before, but this was easily the closest it's ever come to that. A half-star would indicate that a movie was at least viewed and digested, and I suppose even a movie as worthless as "Eaters" deserves such distinction. In no uncertain terms, though, it is the single worst movie I have ever seen. I'd like to think of myself as somewhat of an authority when it comes to shoddy and depraved filmmaking endeavors, but "Eaters" is in a cinematic wasteland all its own.
A perfect storm of painfully bad acting and redundant genre tropes, "Eaters" is everything you've seen before and nothing you'll be able to forget anytime soon. The whole young-people-lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-slowly-getting-hacked-down-by-backwoods-people is assuredly the lamest of all horror sub-genres. In some ways, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is both the best and worst thing to happen to the genre.
I can't help but blame Tobe Hooper somewhat for inspiring an endless amount of watered-down copycats some four decades after his seminal release. Just when I think a product can't be diluted any further, along comes a movie like "Eaters" to restore my faith. I don't even want to describe "Eaters" for the sake of this review for I am scared of having some sort of of PTSD-related flashback. Here goes nothing...
"Eaters" is technically a period piece, but if it weren't for the date in the opening sequence there would be no other telltale indicators that the movie takes place in the '70s. Perhaps that was a purposeful attempt at eradicating the characters' use of cellphones, but in any regard the movie itself could easily be set in present day and they'd be none the wiser.
A young group of travelers loses a member at a rest stop and stumbles across a biker gang in the process. The gang is no "Hell's Angels" by any stretch of the imagination and the two groups are slowly targeted by a masked local family hellbent on defending their abandoned desert town. The group gets hacked down one-by-one in a painfully predictable and boring fashion until the viewer is finally shown mercy with a haphazard ending, the only solace being that the movie is finally over.
Seeing as how it is officially October, I wanted to use "Eaters" as fair warning to anybody who finds themselves standing outside of a Walgreens about to do terrible things at a Redbox by renting this film. Just walk away from the machine; there are better things out there I assure you. Be safe this Halloween; bad movies are all around us this time of year.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZpZBb-uwc]