Driftwood

Posted by Horror Grinder on November 16, 2007

Review by Fatally Yours

Tim Sullivan, director or 2001 Maniacs, follows up that 2005 gorefest with the much more subdued ghost/coming-of-age tale Driftwood. Driftwood is Sullivan’s deeply personal and very heartfelt film and, at its best, shows he is no one-trick pony good for only raucous and bloody horror comedies. At worst, though, it’s a mediocre ghost tale that plays more like a dramatic after-school special than a horror film.

David Forrester (Ricky Ullman) finds himself placed in Driftwood, a detention center for troubled male youths after his parents (the familiar faces of Lin Shayne and Marc McClure) read a blog he’d written about death, which leads them to think he would harm himself. David just lost his older brother to an overdose, but his parents just don’t understand his fixation with his death. They think that Captain Kennedy (Diamond Dallas Page) can straighten him out and teach him how to be “a man” within his youth rehabilitation compound (aka prison). David is immediately branded a smart-ass and heckled by the Captain and his underlings. He is even forced to run “the gauntlet,” a military-style course, while his Level 1 bunk mates beat him. David keeps his cool and a stiff upper lip and earns the respect of the others. Meanwhile, David keeps seeing a ghostly presence and learns that the Captain’s nephew, Jonathan, who was also interned there, mysteriously disappeared. As he gets closer to solving the mystery, he may very well put his own life and the lives of those around him in peril. (more…)

Stabbed first by Fatally Yours