On a RV road trip through Ireland, a group of college kids find themselves the victims of a horrific gypsy curse after they inadvertently rundown an elderly woman out in the furthest reaches of the rural backcountry. Stalked by a group of men eager to get their hands on trinket they’ve picked up almost by accident, they are also being hunted by a mythical bird of prey, this giant avenger intent on picking them off one by one feasting on their flesh to its heart’s delight.

CRITIQUE

The Syfy Channel production Roadkill starts off pretty decently. Sure the setup is pure B-movie cheese, a group of stupid American college kids doing something idiotic unleashing the wrath of the local yokels in the process, but everything is staged so well and the tension is ratcheted up so beautifully the fact none of this is even remotely original isn’t that gigantic a problem. Besides, any movie that loads itself up with veteran Irish character actors like Stephen Rea (how far this former Academy Award nominee has sadly fallen) and Ned Dennehy can’t be all bad, and I definitely liked the way director Johannes Roberts and writer Rick Suvalle are so blatantly unsympathetic towards the core group of characters and their horrific plight.

But as the movie goes on it sadly becomes less and less likeable, mainly because it’s central figure, the supposedly strong-willed and resilient Kate (Kacey Barnfield), becomes less and less interesting and more and more detestable as events progress. I get what the filmmakers were going for, wanting to show how the stresses and the terrors of the events she and her friends are facing slowly decimate the young woman’s resolve, but that doesn’t mean I enjoyed spending so much time with her. I just don’t find it particularly interesting to watch a movie where my main protagonist spends all her time finding reasons to give up, and by the time she makes her final, fateful decisions I’d so given up on the young lady I could have cared less about what she ultimately ended up doing.

The rest of the group isn’t even worth mentioning for the most part, the majority of them so typically faceless they hardly register, while the ones that do aren’t interesting enough to matter as far as the grand scheme of things are concerned. A subplot concerning a mystical amulet isn’t dealt with even close to satisfactorily, and some of the choices the characters make are even more idiotic than normal as far as this type of B-grade endeavor are concerned.

Sad, really, because Roadkill has potential. The supporting cast is good, the special effects are better than average (at least as far as Syfy efforts are concerned) and the scrip has a bit more teeth and heck of a lot more bit than I was close to anticipating. But in the end I just didn’t care for the film at all, the fact that I began to hate spending time with the characters, most notably its main one, Kate, a problem I couldn’t even start to get beyond no matter how hard I may have been willing to try.

THE VIDEO

Roadkill is presented in 1.78:1 Widescreen.

THE AUDIO

Roadkill comes with an English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track with optional English SDH subtitles.

EXTRAS

There are no special features included with this release.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Roadkill is a Syfy Channel production that I want to say better things about than I can. The pedigree is higher than normal, the acting most notably, and the first half of the picture is fairly strong for a run-of-the-mill creature-feature college kids in trouble B-movie adventure. But the characters prove to be too unlikeable, the last third too horribly idiotic, the movie suffering on more levels than I can easily recount, making the finished product an insufferably disappointing throwaway I was far more disgusted and upset by than I truly had any right to be going in.