Scarce starts as three snowboarding buddies Dustin (Thomas Webb), Owen (editor, writer, producer & director John Geddes) & Trevor (editor, writer, producer & director Jesse T. Cook) from Jersey are driving home from Colorado through Pennsylvania during a fierce snowstorm, they become lost & crash their car during which Trevor is hurt badly. Dustin & Owen walk off in search of help & come across a cabin belonging to a recluse named Ivan (Steve Warren) who offers them assistance, he drives them back to their car in his truck but Trevor has mysteriously vanished. With no way to get back to town Dustin & Owen accept Ivan's offer of a place to sleep for the night but things just don't seem quite right somehow & the boys worst fears are realized when Ivan turns out to be a cannibal & currently on the look out for fresh meat...
This Canadian production was edited, written, produced & directed by John Geddes & Jesse T. Cook who also have large roles in front of the cameras as they star in the thing as well so I guess any praise or criticism is down to them & I have to admit that I quite enjoyed Scarce, I am not a lover of the modern low budget horror at all (just look at some of my comments) but I thought Scarce was a decent effort & much, much better than I was expecting. It's not perfect as it takes a little too long to get started, there's a baffling scene in which one of the lads gets free yet he doesn't take one of the guns on the wall in the cabin with which to blow his captors & torturers away & I don't understand why Ivan & his mate lets the two lads go at the end in order to hunt them down, why don't they just shoot them dead while they are tied up? Why even give them the opportunity to escape? If Ivan has turned cannibal to survive & he likes the taste of human flesh where does the hunting part come in? These are actually minor complaints though as there are more positives than negatives here which is a rarity for a low budget horror film these days, the two central character's of Dustin & Owen are much better than expected as they act like proper people (gasp, shock) as they seemed concerned about their friend & not about playing pranks on each other or where the next beer is coming from, one tries to do the sensible thing & get help & they just seem to ask the right questions, have the right reactions to situations (apart from the gun moment) & just come across as normal. Althouggh there is nothing of great originality here I thought the decision to shun the usual clichéd deformed inbred family of backwoods mutants was refreshing & the villains here are just normal (well, apart from being cannibals) people too. Overall I found myself enjoying Scarce more than I ever thought I would & while the plot is minimal there are some good moments & it's fairly grim & downbeat too.
The snowy isolated location is used quite well & there's certainly a cold desolate atmosphere, the inside of the cabin isn't overdone although there are some nasty surprises in the secret basement. There's some good gore here, as far as I could tell there wasn't any awful CGI computer effects either. There's a bone sticking through someones leg, someones back is sliced off exposing their spine, there's a severed hand & decapitated head, there are all sorts of slabs of human meat & entrails seen, there's a slit throat, some gunshot wounds including a really impressive effect in which someone has a huge hole blasted right through them with a shotgun that is very similar to a scene in Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) as you can even see the guy's face who pulled the trigger through the gaping hole & there are a couple of torture scenes including a toenail being ripped out & a tooth being pulled out. The opening ten or so minutes also feature various naked girls, a sex scene & some lesbianism while the ending also features some more female nudity but in seedier circumstances. The IMDb lists a whopping twenty six executive producers, I guess they all put some money in & that's how Scarce was financed.
With a supposed budget of about $500,000 this really was low budget & the fact it looks so good is a real compliment to the makers, thank god there's none of that horrible shaky hand-held cinematography or that annoying quick as a flash editing where you can't tell whats going on, this looks like a proper film with decent photography where you it's always clear whats happening. Although set entirely in the US this was apparently filmed mainly in Ontario in Canada. The acting is pretty good, the lads are low key & again just seem normal while Ivan the cannibal plays it cool as well with just the right amount of menace without going overboard.
Scarce was a real pleasant surprise, these days I go into low budget horror films I have never heard of before expecting the worst but occasionally a gem will pop up like Scarce, sure it's not the best film ever but you could do a lot worse. Recommended for horror fans for sure.
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