MTI 2008
R1 DVD
Spiker is a rather innovative slasher film
which received accolades at The New York City Horror Film Festival. While it has all the elements of a
traditional slasher film from dumb teenagers, semi nude girls and lots of slaughter
using a wide variety of weapons from axes to spikes, it moves beyond the well worn path and
includes some intriguing turns including a fascinating ghost story along the
way.
The story centres on Spiker, a serial
killer who has killed some twenty seven people by spiking them with railway spikes.
The method of killing alone helps makes this film stand out – it is brutal and visceral.
Add to this that the killer is huge, bulky, albino with pink eyes and you have
a truly terrifying character. While being transported to a psychiatric
institution via ferry Spiker either suffers a fit or fakes one, kills the
doctor and some of the police and jumps overboard. While everyone thinks he is
dead, he escapes onshore and returns to the place of his humiliation. Along the
way we are treated to some excellent cinematography, the scene where he rises
up out of the water before beginning his new killing spree is truly
breathtaking and when he walks along the railway line at night smashing the
spikes together, you get a real lump in your throat!
It seems Spiker was in love with Elizabeth
but when she became pregnant to another man, she was forced to marry him. They decided
to meet for a last tryst on the night before her marriage and her journey to
Boston but she could not stand loosing the man she loved so committed suicide
by throwing herself in front of a train. This sent Spiker off the “rails” and
he began to kill indiscriminately, burying bodies along the railway tracks.
While I have some qualms about the film in
terms of its sometimes wooden acting, this is more than countered by an
interesting plot, a bizarre and unusual killer and lots of suspense and terror.
This is a highly successful slasher moving the genre in new directions with the
added dimension of a ghost story and a fetish for railway spikes.
This review will appear in Volume 2:1
(2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.
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