Clinton Road
Directed by: Richard Grieco and Steve Stanulis
Runtime: 77 occasionally Eric Roberts-filled minutes
Clinton Road takes its name from the real stretch of New Jersey road, which a little research tells me does lend itself to some spooky stories. There’s a quaint charm in the concept of basing a horror film around real urban legends. Unfortunately, Clinton Road doesn’t quite live up to the potential of the idea. Some things are better in theory than in practice.
The film opens with a woman (Sarah Pribis) screaming and running away from… something. What she is doing out there we don’t know, nor do I think we ever find out. We do find out that her name is Jessica and she has never been found. She leaves behind a sister (Katie Morrison) and husband (Ace Young). They’ve decided to contact each other and go investigating themselves. They get together a small party of friends, a psychic, and their casual sex buddies and decide to go and hang out with Ice-T and Vincent Pastore first.
Ice-T is not in the film much, unfortunately. He’s there to be Ice-T and provide some exposition. He’s an ex-cop that runs a nightclub that the characters meet at to get some drinks into them, which is always wise before investigating the disappearance of your wife along a haunted stretch of road. His role isn’t crucial and could have been filled by anyone. The only reason Ice-T is in this movie is so that Ice-T could be in this movie.
I found myself thinking “I like the way it hasn’t done this” quite a few times in the movie, only for it to then go and do that thing I was happy it didn’t do. I like a bit of ambiguity when it comes to some horror films. Early on in Clinton Road, I had no clue what sort of horror film I was going to get. Was it going to be a supernatural thing? A slasher film? I liked being unprepared, but Clinton Road is too eager to answer the questions it raises. Which I’m sure some people would appreciate. By the end of the film you’ve got your answers. I guess.
This film did have writers. I’m informed by IMDB that the story is by one of the directors, Steve Stanulis, that Derek Ross Mackay wrote the screenplay, and that revisions were done by Noel Ashman. Nothing that has undergone that sort of process should have the holes Clinton Road does. At one point, a character that is in hysterics says that the psychic was rambling about a bridge, and that there is no way she is going anywhere near a bridge. Except the psychic never used the word “bridge”. Things like that should have been caught.
The film chooses a really grungy aesthetic. The title cards and the like look like they were done on somebody’s home laptop (they probably were), and they explode onto the screen with “attitude”. That aesthetic feels a bit dated, and I would have preferred something a bit more restrained. It just doesn’t feel like the right choice. The film also makes some odd choices with music too, and it feels like the nightclub setting is just an excuse to play their friends’ party music (and it probably was).
Clinton Road never really gets into the gear it needs to be in to be scary. The acting isn’t particularly bad. Everyone is trying. The film is trying in its own way. It actually works within its limitations quite well. It pumps out “effects” the way it intends. It just… doesn’t work as well as it needs to. It’s not ambitious enough to get itself going. There are threads to something here, but they aren’t attached to anything substantial enough to warrant pulling even if you wanted to.
After watching Clinton Road, there was one thing I wanted to talk about. It wasn’t about the plot holes or the resolutions of the plot. No way. The one thing I wanted to talk about was the Eric Roberts cameo. It might be the weirdest cameo I have ever seen, and it fascinates me. Eric Roberts is trying to get into Ice-T’s nightclub. He doesn’t interact with any of the characters. The woman checking his identification has no other scene. When Eric Roberts introduces himself, she says “I know Eric Roberts. He is taller and better looking”. Somehow looking at his ID makes her realise this is the Eric Roberts. Did he have “occasional Hollywood actor” on there? She swoons a bit and Eric Roberts is a nice guy to her. I have no clue why it happened, and I do not understand how it makes any sense, but it was glorious.
Clinton Road feels like a bunch of promising film students left an assignment until the last minute and had to hobble something together before the deadline. It ticks certain boxes, but it leaves others unticked, so you can give them a passing grade, technically, but you know they could do better. It probably won’t be anyone’s best work. And that Eric Roberts cameo.
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