Madison County (2011)

After taking a few days off from watching movies and looking at the paranormal unexplained world from a more scientific eye, it was time to get back to some entertainment.  The first flick I grabbed for my Fathers Day weekend viewing was the 2011 low budget entry, Madison County.

Plot/ A group of college kid’s travel to a small, mountain town called Madison County to interview the author of a tell-all book on the accounts of several grisly murders that happened there. However, when the kids get to Madison County, the author is nowhere to be found and the town’s people act as if they have not seen him in years. They also say that the killer never existed and the murders never happened. However, when the kids start digging around to get their own answers, they find out that the stories may be more real than the townspeople are letting on!

When I saw this box at Family Video, I was drawn in by the thought of a pig-masked psychopath and that is what I got. Unfortunately, this one does little to rise above or set itself apart from some of the other flicks in the backwoods setting. It is definitely full of cliché.  I will say that the quality of filmmaking was there (minus some editing flaws) for such a low reported budget, giving hope that with a bigger budget movies from Eric England could be something. There was an extremely uneasy and believable atmosphere throughout. However, there was some pacing issues early on, the characterization never hit home with everything sort of running together and there was a lack of gore (a lot of blood splatter though), all things that hurt the film overall. In the end, it was a bit too subdued and lacked originality. Sure, I would not run out and buy this one, bit it did have some entertaining moments and could help pass a couple hours if you need to.