Shadow (2009)

Starring: Jake Muxworthy, Karina Testa, & Nuot Arquint

Director: Frederico Zampaglione - Rating: NR - Score: 3 stars

For years I'd heard how twisted and truly horrific Italian horror films were, but I never saw one. I just can't get into something when I have to sit there reading subtitles for two hours. That's why I was excited when I heard about Shadow, an American movie written and directed by Italian horror filmmakers. The film is centered on David (Jake Muxworthy), a soldier who has just come back from Iraq, who is on a European bike trip. David is looking to clear his mind with his favorite activity, when he comes across a beautiful woman being harassed by hunters. He intervenes, gets the girl, and in the process becomes a target. That is when this film takes a big one-eighty, because during the chase, they enter a creepy area of the woods, run into something far more sinister, and all wind up in the same boat. I've said it time and time again, today's horror films are almost always poorly written gorefests, full of jump scares, that aren't scary anymore. Shadow has the gore, some truly horrific and brutal gore, but aside from that, this film is genuinely creepy and very frightening. I don't know how or where they found Nuot Arquint, but the man put a chill in my bones. Arquint and Muxworthy were terrific on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the rest of the cast left a lot to be desired. This was a debut for the Director and many of the actors, so Shadow wasn't without it's mistakes and weak points, that being said, I just love the fact that it scared me, and for as scary as the film was, it may have been the cleverly written twist in the end that was the most horrifying of all.