Lake Dead is yet another entry into the overcrowded "city kids go
camping and run into murderous inbred rednecks" genre.
The Lake sisters find out that they have inherited a rural motel
from a grandfather they never knew they had. The existence of this
secret causes a significant tiff with their estranged father, who is remarkably
close-mouthed about his reasons for hiding the family from the girls.
Despite their father's ominous warnings, they are determined to see their new
property, so they grab some friends, hop in a Winnebago, and head for
hillbilly land.
Poor move.
Of course, dad might have been just a bit more explicit about why
the girls should avoid their family. He might have mentioned, for
example, that their family tree doesn't have any branches, and that
the resultant inbreeding has produced a brood of cretinous
psychopaths. He might also have touched upon the fact that the other relatives
willfully continue the inbreeding to this day. That last one might have been
especially important to mention, since the three fresh young, nubile sisters are
immediately seen as potential breeding machines for their country
cousins.
Well, to make a long story short, the rest of the family plans to
mate with the sisters after having killed all their friends. I suppose
that's about all you really need to know. There's the usual
axe-wielding, dentally-challenged mutants, and the usual torture
implements, yadda, yadda ... There's also a local sheriff who
pretends to be sympathetic, but in reality is their father's brother
and has every intention of humping the living daylights out of his
nieces - just as he does with his mom, the girls' grandma, whose
existence offers the girls yet another surprise. Ol' Uncle Chuck kinda
gives a new and far more literal meaning to the term "motherfucker."
"Now THAT's how you fuck family."
(Dad, when he comes to the rescue and
kills Uncle Chuck)
Move along. Nothing to see here. It's the same-old same-old, except
written, directed and performed at a level beneath even the genre's
minimal standard. The gore is not particularly imaginative, and the
T&A is restricted to one peripheral character, despite several other
opportunities within the script. The director and writer are both first-timers, and
many of the performers also seem to be inexperienced and
unprofessional, so the film just plods along painfully in routine ways
to its predictable conclusion.
