My quick rating – 3.4/10. When behavioral science major Amber (Sabina Gadecki) investigates a series of murders at Capps Crossing, she finds herself caught in a tangled web of lies involving the local ranger and his son, David. And judging by the way Wrong Side of Dead starts, somebody has been lying for quite a while.
The film starts with overbearing music and the sound of an ambulance driving. Right away, it becomes clear that none of them had a good night. In a hospital, there is a man trying to seek help. There is also a mother and her son arguing because she has gotten tired of bailing him all the time. A badly injured woman is then brought in and everyone has a different version of what happened.
The son claims he’s the one who was shot. Everyone else blames him. And, they probably should.
The movie packs all of this into the opening minutes, including a wonderfully questionable medical moment where the heart monitor waits to flatline until after someone runs out of the room. Apparently these monitors have a “you’re out of the room, you’re dead” setting.
Then we jump ahead a year and meet four girls going camping, which is always an encouraging sign in a horror movie. They get themselves settled in, and wouldn’t you know it, the local ranger comes along to check on them. Because when you’re writing a horror movie, sometimes the character most likely to be involved in everything suspicious is conveniently the guy who has keys to the woods.
From there, Wrong Side of Dead settles into its familiar horror-thriller routine. Everyone is hiding something, everyone seems suspicious, and the story keeps piling on secrets as Amber tries to figure out what happened at Capps Crossing. I was actually surprised to see Beverly D’Angelo turn up as Sandra, David’s mother, which was probably one of the more interesting surprises the movie had to offer.
Unfortunately, the movie itself is kind of a mess. It is like the story is trying so damn hard to set up the twist, and we can actually hear the gears grinding. The characters do things for the sake of the plot, revelations are made on account of convenience, and the mystery itself doesn’t gel well enough.
The acting is strangely adequate, though. Nobody completely embarrasses themselves, and Gadecki does enough with Amber to keep the investigation watchable. David (Garrett C. Phillips), on the other hand, feels noticeably flat for a character who should be carrying considerably more weight in the story. Considering how much of the mystery revolves around him, I expected a little more menace.
There is enough here to make it semi-watchable for a single viewing, particularly if you happen to be in the mood for a low-budget horror mystery where everybody has secrets, and nobody seems particularly interested in making good decisions. But the movie never comes together well enough to make the mystery feel worthwhile.
Wrong Side of Dead isn’t quite bad enough to become entertainingly bad, nor good enough to make you care all that much about figuring out what’s going on. It’s just kind of…there. A mildly watchable horror-thriller that you can finish, shrug at, and immediately understand why you probably shouldn’t have gone looking for it in the first place.
