User Reviews

A scavenger hunt is concocted by an annoying guidance counselor, and it's only when her beau ends up supposedly kidnapped and in danger that a paranoid, Jenny(Christina Brucato), who saw her sister stabbed repeatedly by a killer posing as a cop, will join in on the festivities, looking for clues in New York City with other participants who reluctantly join in the hopes of winning a pair of White Stripes tickets. What seems like a harmless game turns deadly as a psychopath starts plunging his knife into the bodies of the college kids, with Jenny not only worried for her own life, but of Gavin(Tate Ellington)and her fellow students as well. The scavenger hunt itself seems like a novel idea, but it takes so long to set up the scenario that I imagine many slasher fans will find it intolerable and frustrating. So much of the film is dedicated to the Gavin and Jenny romance, and the scavenger hunt itself doesn't get particularly bloody until well over and hour. I think the film's plus is that the cast isn't too bad. Brucato and her new lesbian friend Deena(Frankie Shaw)actually have good chemistry together(..the film seems to flirt with the idea of a possible intimacy, but, sadly, nothing ever comes of it, although Deena does attempt to kiss Jenny, interrupted by Paula(Karla Mosley), concerned about her boyfriend Higginbotham(Decargo Sanyal)). Bryan Fenkart is the insufferable Tim, who is so pleased with how he designed the hunt, yet has a really hard time getting others to partake. Hollis Scarborough is a wannabe drama actress, AnGela(she really stresses the "GEL" in her name), whose love for her craft tends to make her a bit of off-putting. Other characters include Roy(Alex Brightman), Chappy(Brian J Smith), and blond hottie slut Camille(Karissa Staples)..they service the plot as extra fodder for the psycho in a hoody. The movie has those scenes where cell phones don't work and characters get out of the car when a suspicious sound is heard on the outside. To the film's credit, there are moments of potent ultra-violence through the vicious use of the knife, such as when the killer guts one victim like a fish, and plants it in the mouth of another who attempts to cry out(not to mention the murder sequence where the knife goes through the victim's head and out her throat). Ultimately, "Red Hook" is simply just another slasher which will eventually find itself darkening the back of a rental store on some DVD shelf with all the others collecting dust. The identity of the killer will come as no surprise to anyone, I imagine, unless you are totally clueless, and the reasoning behind such heinous acts leaves much to be desired. Bottom line, "Red Hook" is bland, mediocre, and forgettable.

An effective opening scene shows 10 year old Jenny see her sister murdered. Jump to Jenny (Brucato) in college where she is afraid to leave her dorm room. She becomes involved with Gavin (Ellington) and reluctantly agrees to a college scavenger hunt around New York City. A killer is using the game to track and kill the contestants. In what amounts to a modern slasher film, the set up and premise is a good one for a slasher film. Too bad it's 2009 and not 1980, because this movie misses every opportunity to be scary, fun and entertaining. Elizabeth Lucas directs like she is shooting a modern sitcom not a horror film. There is a little gore thrown in at the final minute but the lame acting and boring characters will make you lose your interest way before the killer can even get started.

There was an episode on "CSI--New York" during the past month with a very similar plot to RED HOOK. Despite having just an ad-shortened 38 minutes or so to work with, CSI-NY's Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his crew got about five times as much accomplished entertainment-wise as the bumbling New York City police detective Lt. Tom Fox (Terrence Mann) and the rest of the RED HOOK cast managed to provide in 85 minutes. It's a sad commentary when an "unrated" feature film--where presumably anything goes--comes off as duller and less sexy than a prime-time network TV offering on a similar subject. While RED HOOK is billed as a horror flick, it's a sure fire bet to put the viewer to sleep more quickly than a CBS police procedural aimed as bed-time fare for the 60- to 90-year-old demographic. Gavin (Tate Ellington), the perverter of a lame Welcome Week scavenger hunt for the RED HOOK collegians, offs about half the campus, with less a sense of plausible threat than that created in just a few seconds of screen time by the twisted frat pledge master in the CSI episode, whose game playing is intended to kill no one. RED HOOK may spray a little crimson fake blood, but it offers little to hook the horror buff's attention.

***SPOILERS*** Over the top slasher flick that besides it's deep red as well as other garish color photography also skillfully juxtaposes the action in the film on a New York City Subway map much like the 1979 inner city cult classic "The Warriors".

Jenny has never gotten over the brutal murder of her big sister back in North Carolina when she was 10 years old and developed a serious case of agoraphobia because of it. It's now ten years later when Jenny is now about to attend New York University she's obligated to go on a scavenger hunt with her fellow classmates as some kind of collage initiation rite. Being text-ed and e-mailed by her student instructor Tim on clues that would lead Jenny and her fellow collage classmate to the pot of gold, or free White Stripe concert tickets, at the end of the rainbow that as it turns out happens to be the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

What at first looked like a fun walk in the park or city later turned out to be fatal for almost all the students participating in this scavenger hunt. The fact is that the students who participate in this scavenger hunt will not end up winning any of its prizes but end up becoming victims of it! Victims of a deranged psycho who has it in for anyone who didn't go through the sufferings in life that he did. And to even the score he's to make sure that everyone participating in this hunt will not come out of it not only with the free White Strip concert tickets but with their lives as well!

It's not until well into the movie that Jenny & Co. finally realize that their being targeted for murder by very probably the person who's giving them the clues, by cell phone text massages and photos, that leading them straight to their own murders not to the free concert tickets! The blood letting never lets up with almost all the students ending up butchered by the faceless psycho killer with Jenny for some strange reason seemingly immune to his wild and murderous rampages! That's until Det.Fox from back in North Carolina who's been hired by Jenny's parents to look after her safety uncovers who the killer is just before he adds Jenny to his long list of murder victims.