SIMON SAYS – Mid noughties back woods horror that replays some very familiar tropes – well, there's basically a vanload of pot smoking kids and a forest and a killer, I think I've seen something similar before somewhere. The difference is, 'Simon Says' stars Ace of Dorks Crispin Glover, present here as a pair of creepy twins with a homicidal past and access to flying pick axes and other bizarre bits of machinery. Glover is, I guess, an acquired taste, and whether you dig 'Simon Says' or not will probably depend on your tolerance of his very particular brand of performance. Here, he's on good form, seemingly out to deconstruct the very notion of acting with a characterisation which is so lopsided it nearly takes you out of the film. However, 'Simon Says' is pretty much played for laughs, so Glover's weirdness is more or less contained. Apart from Glover, it offers a surprising amount of gore, throwing avalanches of innards and severed limbs at the screen at a couple of points. The bloodshed isn't necessarily sustained, but it felt to me like there was quite a lot of it. Overall, 'Simon Says' is rather good fun, and I would definitely recommend it to fans of Glover or to those who are into graphic simulated dismemberment. Oh, and it was made by the guy who directed 'Bigfoot and the Hendersons'!
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