Horror Movie Review: The Trek (2008)

Directed by Lola Wallace who co-wrote it with Tom Devlin, The Trek is a horror movie surrounding a missing couple. Told in documentary style with interviews from the couple’s families and friends as well as seeing the events that befell the pair.

It’s a decent idea but a flawed one because of some iffy acting, a really slow plot and a finale that is unnecessarily gory. It’s rare that you’d find me say that but the shockingly violent ending comes out of nowhere and is very gruesome.

Keith (Brett Hundley) and Kim Russell (Erin Fleming) are newlyweds and have decided to go trekking in the mountains. We learn plenty about them as they wander slowly around. Cutting between their conversations about how much they love each other and interviews with their loved ones.

You see Keith and Kim have disappeared, confounding authorities. Some believe that they were murdered, others believe they decided to just run away and start afresh. This latter theory is given credence by the pair talking about the difficulties they have had with being accepted as a couple by their families. This isn’t half-bad but would work far better if there was a really good reason as to why. They have slightly different backgrounds but beyond that, there is nothing. Romeo and Juliet, they are not.

It’s all irrelevant anyway as we know roughly what is going to happen to them. I mean the ‘bad-guys’ of the movie are on the DVD cover.

Keith and Kim are attacked by some sort of Hills Have Eyes/Mountain-folk person. Keith manages to fight them off, killing them in the process. What follows is one of the most jarring scenes in the movie as Kim is outraged that he killed the person attacking them. She is disgusted with his behaviour as if he had any other choice. He does go a bit over-board but he was just trying to protect them.

That’s then forgotten about as the pair are forced to run through the woods. All to escape another that appears to be far more aggressive. They get split up and both are eventually captured and taken back to the creature’s camp. It’s in here that things get gory as Keith’s groin is squeezed until it explodes and then ripped off in gruesome fashion. He then gets his face cut off and peeled from the bone. As effects go, it’s not bad but so over the top.

Frustratingly only after Keith has been butchered does Kim decide to escape leading to an ending that will have many a watcher saying “what?”

The Trek just isn’t very good.