Movie Review: Black Rock

Today's movie is Black Rock. Amazon Prime has added a ton of new "horror" movies, but I decided to keep going full-speed ahead on my original list

Sarah and Lou friends are going on a trip to a remote Maine island. Sarah (Kate Bosworth) hasn't told Lou (Lake Bell) that Abby (Katie Aselton, also director of the movie) is coming and she hasn't told Abby that Lou is coming. She scares the bejeezus out of both of them by telling them she has cancer. Surprise! She doesn't have cancer.

I'm hoping by the end of this "horror" flick we find out why Abby and Lou hate each other so much. Fingers crossed it's not before one of them dies.

The ladies made a time capsule when they were ten and start following the map to find it. Abby and Lou get into a fight - more or less Abby decides to make a big deal about an eye roll. Oh... that's what happened. Lou did the dirty with Abby's boyfriend of two years. Six years prior. Apparently Abby tried to hit Lou in the face with a sledgehammer. What? Abby wanders off alone and stays pretty distant. Lou tries to smooth things over and then Abby screams bloody murder because she sees a few guys with guns walking by. Lou recognizes one as Henry Wallace, the younger brother of an old classmates. Abby gets shewasted and hits on Henry, very overtly. He continues to talk to Lou, ignoring Abby. Abby decides to go get some firewood, which literally translates into her shining a flashlight onto her face until Henry goes to her. Lou and Sarah talk to the other two guys. They find out they were deployed together and have only been back for eighteen days. Henry and Abby start making out in the woods, but she starts to come to her senses. He doesn't take that very well and tries to take her by force. She slaps him and he punches her in the face. He continues and she hits him in the head with a rock. While that was all happening, Sarah and Lou find out that the guys were dishonorably discharged. They hear Abby scream and find Henry barely alive and Abby in hysterics. The men attack the girls, knocking them out.

They wake up on the beach, beaten, bruised, and bloody. They're tied together. The guys, Derek and Alex, are discussing what to do. Alex tells him, "They're just girls. They're someone's daughters." That nearly made me cry and I have no idea why. I think it was the fact that in the spur of the moment they acted, but Alex realizes that they shouldn't act on their impulses just yet. He loses that notion real fast though and wants to just shoot them. Abby challenges Derek to a fight and he unties her, only for Lou to tackle him and all three girls to escape in opposite directions. For some reason, Alex and Derek set off rounds and explain their military credentials as they search for them. Alex questions Derek about his choices, and Derek tells him that they went there to hunt and they were going to get their hunt now.

Sarah is up a tree when the guys walk directly underneath her. She manages to hold her breath and hold onto the tree just long enough to go unnoticed. Abby, however, keeps moving around and gets the map to their cabin/time capsule. She is elated when she finds it. It's not much of a cabin, as it was probably built by them when they were like ten. She hears rustling and is relieved to see that it's Lou and Sarah. They try to convince her that it's not her fault. Lou says that maybe they should stay there because the woods are dense, maybe they'll leave. They collectively decide that the guys will never stop looking for them and that they'd wait for nightfall and get to their boat.

Nightfall. The rope has been cut and the boat is floating away. Abby volunteers to swim to it after Sarah tells them that they'd die of hypothermia before they reach the boat. Lou and Sarah don't let her.They decide to all go for the boat and Abby volunteers to go first. They army crawl along the beach and Sarah decides to make a very loud and adamant fuss about it. She says she's going back and stands up. She's shot and the other two jump into the water. Lou can't make it, but they're saved when Alex breaks his leg after falling down a decline trying to get down to the beach.

We're down to two girls - the angry two. The one who joked about dying of cancer in 4-6 months is gone and we're left with the two that hated each other at the beginning.

Um.... we're naked. Butt nekkid. We're butt nekkid huddling together in the woods. They have a weird slap fight and get over their issues. I mean... not the hiding from scary dishonorable soldiers bit. They decide to stop being stalked and start stalking them, kill them before they kill us type deal. We're still butt nekkid because our clothes are too cold to put back on. They start looking for something on the map but don't explain what it is. They dig up a box - the time capsule - and find a pocket knife. They fashion spears from it, as Abby and Lou discuss current happenings. Abby has left her husband and Abby tells Lou that it was easier to blame her for what had happened with her boyfriend six years earlier than it was to admit she may have messed it up.

Daytime. Hey! We have clothes on again! Abby volunteers to attack Alex with the knife, which isn't that difficult since he's beach-ridden as his leg was horrifically broken. Abby army crawls her way toward him - because army crawling worked so well last time. She hits a branch and Alex sees her, screaming for Derek. As Lou distracts Derek, Abby and Alex tussle and she gets the shotgun and shoots him dead. Derek traps Lou at the bluffs and runs out of ammo when Abby attacks him from behind. They both attack him. Lou gets stabbed in the process, Abby's leg gets sliced, but Derek gets his throat slit.

Black Rock was a rarity on this list. It was riveting and exciting and scary and had my heart racing the whole time. It was wonderful and I'm really not looking forward to leaving it behind. I also really love Lake Bell.

Moral of this movie: There has to be a better way to get over old personal issues.