Clinton Road is a 2019 horror film about a widowed firefighter who seeks closure after his wife goes missing on an actual haunted road in rural New Jersey.
By now, no doubt very few movie audiences take the words ‘inspired by true events’ to heart, and indeed, one should be packing plenty of grains of salt when it comes to horror titles, many taken to claiming their stories of supernatural ghosts and goblins are on the up and up (hint: they’re not). Now comes director Richard Grieco (that Richard Grieco) and Steve Stanulis‘ latest effort, Clinton Road, an ultra low budget thriller based on some popular folklore surrounding a very real place, having some off-kilter fun with the legends long attached to it – tongue firmly in cheeks – using the ‘inspired by true events’ with a wink and grin.
On a lonely long stretch of road in New Jersey called Clinton Road, a woman named Jessica (Sarah Pribis) goes missing, leaving her husband Michael (Ace Young) and the woman’s sister Isabella (Katie Morrison) searching for answers. Now with a hot new girlfriend named Kayla (Lauren LaVera), Michael hires a medium named Begory (James DeBello), the new guy pal of close friend Gianna (Erin O’Brien), to head down the road and ‘find’ her. However, Michael’s best friend Tyler (Cody Calafiore) is a master skeptic and refuses to believe such hocus-pocus is anything legit, believing it a scam. But once they take to exploring the road, things change and soon it becomes a fight to stay alive. Sort of.
At about an hour and thirteen minutes, you won’t be traveling long on Clinton Road, the film a breezy, talky little venture that is, I’m quite sure, poking some fun at the very genre it snuggles up to. The first twenty minutes are shot in a single room, meant to be a renovated club owned by RJ (Ice-T … that Ice-T), a former cop now in the night life business, where the gang gathers to make their plans. This offers a chance for some weird walk-ins, like a mob-boss-like Mayor (Bo Dietl) to come in along with a blink or you’ll miss it Eric Roberts playing, well, that Eric Roberts literally walking through a door. Clearly Grieco is calling in some favors.
Either way, there’s not much going on or in Clinton Road, the movie, once out of the bar, a small clutch of friends hanging out in the woods talking and bickering. Naturally, night falls and the usual creepy settles in with Begory acting all out of sorts as the menace seeps in. It’s here where the film at least finds its footing, clinging to the standards we’ve all come to expect as we get a face behind the evil in the affectionately named horror monster ‘Ironworker’ (Derek Ross Mackay), a hulking, bearded, goggles-wearing freak with a haunted past.
By no measure is Clinton Road meant to be taken seriously, sort of playing out like a cheap 80s drive-in feature (all that’s missing is bad 3D). It’s superficially overwrought with corny dialogue and over-ripe music that plays right into the now iconic formula of bad slasher movie clichés, which I am again hoping betting is the filmmaker’s intent. It has pretty girls (a goofy sex scene by a campfire with nudity is right out of nowhere), dimwitted boys, a creepy child, lots of running and screaming among the trees, poor choices, a ghost house, and more, making it feel like it’s keeping balance on a thin parodic line. For that, the film earns a whole extra star for committing so straight-faced to it all. It has to be making fun. It just has too. I won’t entertain for a moment that it’s trying to be anything else. True events or not. And just because I can say so, I’ve actually driven Clinton Road, having once lived nearby. Thankfully, I made it out alive. Or did I?