Now playing on MTV
Cast:
Nick Thurston as Dante
Gillian Zinser as Jenna
Reid Ewing as Ethan
Ricky Mabe as Liam
Directed by Scott Glosserman
Review:
Fans of Scott Glosserman and his much heralded Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon will find themselves disappointed by the melodramatic and irritating The Truth Below. Pretty much exactly what you would expect from MTV, it isn’t nearly as horrific as all the Teen Mom promos playing during the commercial breaks.
After airing horror movies and making Teen Wolf, it makes sense that MTV would start producing their own genre films. Their target audience is fond of the genre and the movies themselves are inexpensive. But it was probably expecting too much to hope that The Truth Below, regardless of the director, would turn out to be more than just four self-absorbed, attractive young people sniping at each other for 90 minutes.
After hitting the slopes for Spring Break, college freshmen Dante (Nick Thurston), Jenna (Gillian Zinser), Ethan (Reid Ewing), and Liam (Ricky Mabe) begin their journey back home. A police officer pulls them over to remind them that they will be traveling treacherous roads and are required by law to have chains on their tires.
Of course, someone forgot the chains and before long Dante loses control of the vehicle and they crash. Dazed and confused when they come to, the quartet soon realizes that they are trapped under a significant amount of snow. They can’t open their doors, they are in the middle of nowhere, and oxygen will run out in a matter of hours.
How to pass the time while waiting for an improbable rescue or death? Ethan, a cynical and cruel jackass, contends that the group doesn’t really know one another very well and suggests playing a game where each person reveals a startling secret about themselves. He kicks it off by revealing incestuous feelings towards his “hot” sister, stating that he likes to get up close and personal with her favorite pair of panties.
Liam, Dante, and Jenna each take their turn, confessing things like stealing $50 from a brother, virginity, and ditching a parent’s funeral. As the secrets are revealed, people’s true feelings for one another seep out, and the environment becomes much more hostile. Meanwhile, they lose all hope of being rescued.
None of this is in any way suspenseful or interesting. Each character is a type and you don’t learn anything about them other than a secret or two (not to mention the “secrets” are dull and unsurprising), so you don’t care about their fate. Ethan is particularly unpleasant and a chore to spend time with.
The majority of the movie’s midsection consists of excessive yelling and pouting, the type of behavior one expects from people on MTV, fictional or otherwise. By the end people are doing things way out of character. While it’s easy to imagine teen viewers finding this entertaining, but horror fans will get very little out of it unless they really like watching young people bicker in confined spaces.
Considering the rave reviews for Behind the Mask and the considerable genre fan base Glosserman developed, it has to be a little disappointing that he’s directing a movie for MTV. The Truth Below feels like it could have been directed by just about anyone. If this is typical of what MTV horror will be like, the network would be better off making more reality shows. They’re much scarier.
