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"The Roost" dir. by Ti West


"The Roost"

Ti West's first film! I feel like this one requires a great deal of context to be properly rated and reviewed. It's wild to think that only 2 years after making "The Roost" Ti West went on to direct "The House of the Devil" which almost immediately gained him a cult following. It's even more wild to look at his most recent film "Pearl" and hold it up side by side with "The Roost" to see how far he's come as a filmmaker.

"The Roost" is a homage to cheap, made for TV b-movies. It's a clever design choice to make it look low quality for the sake of imitation rather than what was most likely the reality... a lack of money, locations and actors.

The film follows 4 friends going to a wedding when their car becomes lodged in a ditch after an encounter with a bat. As the group leave the car and search an old farm house for help they encounter more bats and soon learn that these bats are... ZOMBIE BATS!

For what it is, the effects are pretty decent. The bats at time look completely real. At other times they definitely don't. The zombie make-up is actually great.

There is a good level of suspense through the film. The acting is not the best... I assume all of the actors were friends of Ti West... but it works in the context of it being an campy b-movie. There are cameos by Tom Noonan and Larry Fessenden.

The typical Ti West dialogue is there and it's fun to see it at its least refined.

I think if someone were to watch this with zero idea of who made it... they'd probably think it's pretty shitty. However, as I mentioned earlier this one is all about context and with that in mind it was a real treat.

6/10

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