Toad Road (Jason Banker, 2013)

I hate to kick an independent trying to get their start, but I also cannot abide the laziness with which so many treat horror as a cynical means to a quick paycheck. Toad Road has aspirations to a commentary on drug dependency but its improvisational style requires too much of its nonprofessional cast, who struggle to articulate anything even resembling humanity as the film lurches toward a final act that plays at psychological terror but instead looks like a high-schooler dicking around with iMovie effects. To even call it a film is about as charitable as one can be about it.

Read the rest of my review at Spectrum Culture.