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I tend to write somewhere between 750 and 1000 words for these reviews, give or take. Sometimes I write a little less, but not much, and sometimes I have a lot more to say. The problem with writing longer reviews is that sometimes I come across a movie that doesn’t really have a lot that I can say about it. Just Before Dawn is that kind of movie. This is a slasher movie from the early eighties. Have you seen a late-’70s/early-’80s slasher before? If the answer is yes, you’ve seen probably 90% of this movie. That’s not an exaggeration.
A slasher like Just Before Dawn needs to start us with a kill or two to get things going. To that end, we are introduced to Ty (Mike Kellin) and his nephew Vachel (Charles Bartlett), who are drunk and at least pretending to hunt. They investigate what looks like an abandoned church. Suddenly, their truck appears to have its parking brake release, and it careens down the hill, sending Ty after it. In the church, a mysterious shape appears and stabs Vachel in the junk. When that shape walks out of the church, Ty runs off.
With our initial scare taken care of, we’re not going to get much in the way of a scare for some time. Instead, we’re going to get introduced to the main characters, better known as the potential victims for whatever it was that offed Vachel in the church. Don’t worry too much about this—we don’t have a supernatural killer here, just a psycho with a giant, serrated knife.
If you want evidence that Just Before Dawn is a movie that you’ve seen before, our group of young people who are going to be the focus of the film is a group that you’ve seen before. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead are good examples of a group of five young people, three men and two women. This combination of potential victims is so classic that it was parodied in Cabin in the Woods. The only real difference here is that instead of a cabin, our gang of eventual corpses is camping because Warren (Gregg Henry) claims to have a deed to the land. With him are his girlfriend Constance (Deborah Benson), Megan (Jamie Rose), her boyfriend Jonathan (Chris Lemmon), and Jonathan’s brother Daniel (Ralph Seymour).
On their way up to their camping site, they meet forest ranger Roy (George Kennedy!), who tells them they shouldn’t really go up there and should probably go home. Again, the only thing really interesting here is that the person who warns off our potential victims isn’t some crazy whackaloon at the last gas station before the place inhabited by a family of mutants. He’s actually got a responsible job and he doesn’t come across as crazy.
What follows shouldn’t really be much of a surprise. Our group, still needing to encounter some crazy, are eventually going to run into Ty, who is going to tell them about the “demon” who killed his nephew. They’re eventually going to get to their campsite, they’ll set up and look at the nature around them, and before too long, they’re going to be stalked. Slowly, they’re going to realize that something is wrong. Part of that wrong is going to be a family that lives out in the woods who doesn’t seem to have a lot of contact with civilization. And, eventually, we’re going to get more of a body count.
And this is where my typical length of review comes into a problem. I’ve covered the basics of the narrative, and there genuinely isn’t a lot to say beyond that. There are a couple of really good moments of not specifically scare, but of cinematography, surprisingly enough. At one point, at night, one of our characters is in the woods, searching for the body of someone who has already been killed. As he is backing up, swinging his flashlight back and forth, we can see the body now standing up, propped against a tree behind him. It’s really unnerving—this is not an “Oh my God, he’s dead!” thing, because both the audience and the characters are already aware of that. But it’s the first indication they have that his death was not an accident—someone messed with the body and posed it.
But beyond that, there’s not a great deal here that you haven’t seen. It’s fine, but it’s not a film that is going to rewrite the genre or even really add much to it. It’s a very standard slasher with an interesting twist regarding the identity of the killer. Beyond that, you’ve seen almost all of this before.
I do wonder how the hell they got George Kennedy for this.
Why to watch Just Before Dawn: The twist is actually kind of interesting.
Why not to watch: Other than that, there’s nothing new here.
Oh... NEXT!!!!
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