Dir. Dan Lantz (2022)
A farmer tries to take revenge on a town after they try to steal his land.
Stories of revenge permeate the horror genre, with all sorts of instigating events serving to kick off the tales of vengeance. From the ever-popular (and extremely problematic) rape-revenge genre to your typical "ghost comes back to kill the person who killed them first" deal, horror is filled with stories of evil-doers getting their comeuppance. Sometimes, though, the eventual punishment far more than exceeds the crime, as is very much the case with Hayride to Hell, the new film starring horror mainstays Bill Moseley and Kane Hodder.
Farmer Sam (Moseley) runs a haunted hayride and farm, tracking his lineage all the way back to the founding of his little town in Pennsylvania. The farm is on the verge of bankruptcy, helped along by evil land developers, rich neighbors out to get Sam, and the particularly vindictive Sheriff Jubel (Hodder). When Jubel's son and his gang of miscreants begin wrecking shit at Sam's family cemetery, killing one of his dogs along the way, Sam has had enough. The hayride workers come along with him as he plans the Halloween attraction to end all Halloween attractions, and Sam's problems will be solved one way or another by the end of the night.
Chock full of Halloween spirit and filled with fall goodness, Hayride to Hell is an absolute blast for fans of the genre. It's campy as hell, overly dramatic and almost entirely unbelievable, and it goes for corny jokes rather than taking itself even a little seriously. You can tell that Moseley and Hodder were having fun with their roles, as they always do. The best thing about Hayride is that this isn't just a bit part where the two actors took tiny roles just for a one-day paycheck. Every scene has one of the two killers, and they play off of each other like only two genre legends can.
That's not to say that Hayride to Hell is a good movie. It most certainly isn't. The writing is suspect, the actors ham it up even during the best scenes, and there's very little gore, though what gore exists is done fairly well. No, this isn't a film that will wind up on our Best of the Year list, but it's a damn fun ride nonetheless. It's the type of film that you watch to get in the mood for the Spooky Season, and it does a wonderful job of doing so. It feels a little weird to be watching it in early August, but that won't be the case for most of its audience. Much like the (admittedly much better) Haunt, this one eats, sleeps, and breathes Halloween, a welcoming salute to our favorite holiday season.
The great thing about the horror genre is that we don't expect most of the films we watch to be great. They don't have to be to win our affections. I've spoken before about how horror exists on a spectrum where even the worst of the worst will find a legion of fans, and attaching not one, but two all-time names to this one was a brilliant decision that will likely draw in folks who otherwise wouldn't have even cared. Hayride to Hell feels like a film-inside-a-film, a tongue-in-cheek movie that would be played on the television during another horror movie, but fully fleshed out. It's enjoyable, and while Farmer Sam isn't a particularly pitiable character (as most of his problems are either fairly normal or partly his own doing), it's still a ton of fun to watch him get his revenge.
Who this movie is for: Horror fans, B-Horror appreciators, Halloween lovers
Bottom line: Hayride to Hell is cheesy, B-grade schlock, and I loved every minute of it. Bill Moseley and Kane Hodder are legends in the genre, and while this is far from either of their best performances, it's still a hell of a lot of fun. Even the actors clearly had a good time with this one, and you can't ask for a whole lot more from an indie horror starring two of the all-time greats.
