Mickey Keating‘s Carnage Park starts in admirably economic fashion, rending down its slim cast to even slimmer form with a dead-eyed, high-pitched, Bible-thumping Pat Healy tagging human targets with his handy sniper rifle beset with all the rage and judgement of the Old Testament guy upstairs. Ashley Bell plays opposite as the desert-set horror’s shrieky final girl – the victim of a kidnapping who then finds herself in even more hostile territory – and while Keating’s film goes through fits and starts of amassing and losing steam, the final product feels like an over-saturated amalgam of grindhouse slasher flick tropes forked together and raked over a somewhat barren “based on a true story” conceit. Imagine Wolf Creek stripped of its anarchic edge and plunked down in an equally sun-scorched Jesus-lovin’, American nowheresville and you’ll get the picture. (C)
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