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      Donner Pass

      R 2012 1h 30m Horror Mystery & Thriller List
      Reviews 9% 100+ Ratings Audience Score At a remote mountain cabin, seven teenagers find that a gruesome legend may be true when one of their number is found half-eaten. Read More Read Less

      Critics Reviews

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      Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com Have you ever watched a horror film where you really wanted the potential victims to die? Rated: 2.0/4.0 Sep 6, 2020 Full Review Kevin Carr 7M Pictures Most of this film is pretty rote and standard. Rated: 2/5 Aug 10, 2013 Full Review Read all reviews

      Audience Reviews

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      Audience Member A poorly made horror film, Donner Pass is incredibly formulaic and predictable. While on a weekend getaway to a remote mountain cabin a group of college students are stalked by a psychotic killer. The writing is atrocious, as in the acting. And the directing does nothing to create suspense or tension. Donner Pass is a clichéd and unimaginative film that doesn't deliver any scares. Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Audience Member The first 20 minutes of the movie serves no other purpose than to introduce characters and show you who you should like and dislike. They achieve this with absurd and unrealistic caricatures of high school jocks that are no more believable than the poorly explained ending. A halfway decent concept was ruined in this film by a plot that makes no sense. Although acting, directing and the script were all satisfactory, that was hardly enough to compensate for the faulty plot. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/23/23 Full Review Audience Member Donner Pass is a solid slasher film. It has some good gore and one nude scene. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member You have to keep expectations low when you pop in a teen slasher flick, but my oh my was this horrible. The movie is set up sort of like Scream, where you know one of the characters is going to turn out to be the villain, and it could not have been more obvious. Like, seriously, it is blatantly obvious after the very first scene. The thought that the filmmakers could have even entertained the idea that they were keeping us on edge is offensive. Furthermore, the character development was atrocious. Not only were there far too many characters (8 teenagers in one cabin), but every single character was completely void of any depth. Many characters would inexplicably be absent for several scenes in a row. I'm not sure if this was a missed attempt to bring suspicion among those characters, or if the writer simply "forgot" about a few of his completely one dimensional characters for a little while as he was writing the script in a crowded bar. The teen slasher genre is very simple, but so many fail to make the mark. If you were considering this film, I'd suggest you take the title seriously and "pass." Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Audience Member The infamous legend of the Donner Party has been the inspiration for a slew of films both directly and indirectly, and the new low budget feature "Donner Pass" takes a contemporary spin on the tale. After a ridiculous and completely unecessary opening sequence set in the 1800's that sets up the backstory, the movie shifts to modern times with the usual group of horny young teenagers being menaced in the woods. The film is extremely derivative, but it's more "Evil Dead" than "Friday the 13th" with the characters becoming possessed by the spirit of Donner, but that's pretty much saved for the last fifteen minutes. Much of the run time simply builds up to that moment, but oddly enough, it's not as dull as we've come to expect from movies like this. Thanks to some better-than-average directing from Elise Robertson and some shockingly high production values, it held my interest fairly well. The whole thing, even the finale, seems oddly subdued but I was never really bored by it. There are twists along the way, including an especially unconvincing one at the end, but they only prove to be a whole bunch of red herrings. They succeeded in keeping me distracted. There's even a fairly awful folk song by a singer named Orenda Fink that open and close the film that I enjoyed simply because it fits in with the film so well. It reminded me of the tune from the original "My Bloody Valentine". I simply cannot in good faith recommend "Donner Pass", but I enjoyed it a lot more that I ever would have believed. It's a most unusual picture. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/17/23 Full Review Audience Member There is nothing new here, just wooden performances. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Donner Pass

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      Movie Info

      Synopsis At a remote mountain cabin, seven teenagers find that a gruesome legend may be true when one of their number is found half-eaten.
      Director
      Elise Robertson
      Screenwriter
      R. Scott Adams
      Rating
      R (Nudity|A Sexual Assault|Language|Bloody Horror Violence|Teen Drinking)
      Genre
      Horror, Mystery & Thriller
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Streaming)
      May 4, 2017
      Runtime
      1h 30m
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