Cassidy Way (DVD)
Staci Layne Wilson
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Starring Randy Wayne, Christopher Rich, Sydney Sweeney, Nikki Moore, Sean H. Scully, Devin Reeve
Directed by Harvey Lowry
Documentary filmmakers almost never fare well in horror movies. Just look at The Blair Witch Project, and go from there. In the case of Cassidy Way, the ill-fated camera-toting trio consists of one nerdy and pretty female, Gina (Nikki Moore), and two wisecracking all-American guys on camera and sound – Mitch and Collin (Michael Nardelli and Randy Wayne, respectively).
They are on the hunt for the next viral news story when they stumble into a can of worms regarding unreported water contamination in a small town in Kern County… the trespassing 20-somethings enter an old, abandoned fracking site and uncover documents relating to the company, its murky past, and a cover-up regarding the shooting death of a local boy years ago.
After escaping capture by armed water company guards, Gina, Mitch, and Collin run into neighborhood teen Jamison Connors, who offers to hide them at his house. But it’s not the sanctuary they were expecting. As soon as they meet Jamison’s obviously unbalanced mother and sister, they try to get while the getting’s good… but then daddy comes home. Donald (Christopher Rich) is a man obsessed by his young son’s death years ago (that’s how the cover-up comes into play) and suspects the three city-snoops of being involved with the conspiracy… and he exacts his twisted revenge on the innocent victims, a la Jigsaw (though far less gory, but in parts just as squirm-inducing).
Director Harvey Lowry does a good job keeping lots of balls in the air – there are some extraneous storylines about Gina, Mitch, and Collins’ sex lives that really don’t factor into the story except as a fallow attempt to give them some backstory. The script is a bit messy (it’s by two guys without prior feature experience), but overall everyone acquits themselves well. Cassidy Way is well cast, and it moves along to a rather creepy and suspenseful climax.
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Film
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