Candy and a Movie: Acolytes (October Movie 15)

Acolytes

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0902952/?ref_=nv_sr_1

I didn't know anything about this movie going into it except for Joel Edgerton was in it and I'm a fan of his. I didn't even know what an acolyte is which looks bad for me because this movie is Australian and half of their vocabulary is the C word. Movie time.

A girl is out taking a walk through the woods. She's doing a little hiking, playing with butterflies and other woodsy things. Some time later a high schooler named Mark is walking through the same said woods and sees a guy burying something. The digger gets away but Mark gets a good look at his truck. Mark goes to school later and tells his friend James and his girlfriend Chasely about what he saw. They all like to up the punx so they head to the woods and dig up whatever the random guy was burying. Unfortunately it's a body. They freak out and make it their mission to track down the truck of the gravedigger more out of curiosity than justice though.

On their way home, they drive by a random guy with a swastika who chases after them. Story takes a dark turn when James tells us that the Nazi raped him and Mark when they were younger. Yikes. After a while they find the truck and track it down to the guys house. It's Joels and he has a serious bad guy mustache going on. James leaves Joel a note a sign that they know what he did and call him that night telling him to go kill the racist dude in the next 24 hours or they're calling the cops.

There's a scene where James and Chasely go to the bonezone (there must be a fan blowing on her somewhere because her hair is all over the place) and Mark gives himself a low-high five while looking at himself in the mirror at the same time. Weird and sad. When that ends, Joel shows up to kill the rapist but instead asks him info about the Mark and James instead.

The next day the rapist captures all of them and drives the punks to Joel. They're let loose in a trailer park where the rapist tries hunting them down with with a crossbow. James jumps on him though and Mark kills him while Joel watches. A day later or so James is caught and killed by Joel. The killer then picks Mark up and wants him to be his Acolyte (there it is) and kill some hitchhiker with him. Mark says no and is driven to Joel's house where he has Chasely tied up.

Joel puts a gun up to her head and tells Mark to tell her the whole story about what happened in the woods at the beginning or she'll be killed. Mark says that he was hanging out in the woods and wanted to feel the girl up a little bit. As she was running away, the rapist was randomly driving by and hit her with his car. Joel got involved because he found it. So that's what happened. Joel's wife walks in and stabs Mark in the stomach. You could say that she's a bad example for her infant child. Or possibly she's just a very average Australian.

Mark dies but before doing so takes the knife out of his chest and stabs it in Joel. Chasely really kills Joel and gets away. End movie.

Rating: 6.2 Acolytes started out very slow but turned into an enjoyable one time watch thriller. The main characters being your cliche rebel high school kids was meh, especially James but once he got out of the way it was better. Movie went all in with the back story of the kids being rape victims but it ended up working with the main plot. The acting was generally nothing great but the cinematography looked very nice.

Favorite Scene: The basement when everything is revealed.

Memorable Lines: still nothing

What I would've done if I was the main character: Not mess with a mentally disabled girl in the woods and then cover up her death. Also I wouldn't make deals with my rapist for covering up the crime and then get in shady dealings with known murderers. Just a slew of different decisions.

What happens in the sequel: Chasely changes her name to something real and gets revenge by killing Joel's wife and raising their kid as their own. That's revenge right?