DVD review: Madison County (2011)

A group of college kids travel to a small, mountain town called Madison County to interview the author of a tell-all book on the accounts of several grisly murders that happened there. But when the kids get to Madison County, the author is no where to be found and the towns people act like they haven't seen him in years. They also say that the killer never existed and the murders never happened. However, when the kids start digging around to get their own answers, they find out that the stories may be more real than the townspeople are letting on! Madison County is written and directed by Eric England. Yes, it´s quite obvious that we´re on familiar territory and I´ll have to admit that I have a soft spot for backwoods terror flicks like The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn and I don´t mind that the film makers following the cliché' blueprint. It´s a pretty slow moving flick (which necessarily doesn´t have to be a bad thing) and there are some actually pretty tense scenes when things get moving. The acting is pretty good, the camera and editing is good, the visuals are fine and the soundtrack is excellent. The killers look, he wears a pig mask, is cool but isn´t very original as the killer in the recent Porkchop (2010) and it´s sequel Porkchops (2011) also wears one. The killer is pretty brutal and straightforward but I´m pretty sure that the gorehounds will be disappointed, there are some gore but not at all the amount you´d expect, it appears to be all practical gore make-up fx which is nice. Fans of T & A will probably be disappointed that there is only brief topless nudity in the film.
This review is based upon the region 1 DVD release from Image Entertainment.
Rating: 4½ out of 7. Madison County is pretty decent despite being somewhat of a disappointment, it failed to live up to my perhaps unfair expectations after reading the synopsis and seeing the trailer which looked awesome. Worth a watch if your a genre fan!

/JL