SHORTCUT
Directed by: Alessio Liguori
Starring: Jack Kane, Zander Emlano, Zak Sutcliffe, Sophie Jane Oliver, Molly Dew, Andre Claude,
On the bus ride home, five teen school kids re lost in their usual banter and routine until a crashed bus forces their driver to take a detour - a shortcut, if you will! However, they are waylaid by a armed psychopath who starts to terrorize them - but this isn't the worst thing they are going to come across this evening…
Shortcut, like its antagonist, is a strange and ill-thought out beast. Made in Italy and Germany but featuring a young English cast, it would seem that the script lost a few pages in translation.
What is never made clear is why these five kids are on this bus, on this particular route which takes them out to the middle of nowhere. Are they really just travelling home from a day at school? If so, their driver would have known their route like the back of his hand, so when the bus encounters the roadblock, he would know not to take the so-called shortcut next to the disused military research facility…
On the bus we have five students. Nolan is the moody bad-boy, Karl is the nerd, Queenie (aka IQ) is the brain, Reggie is the jock and Bess is the princess. Could it be that writer Daniele Cosci had been watching a lot of John Hughes movies and based his main characters around The Breakfast Club?
After some early banter to establish some of the group's characteristics, the bus driver is taken hostage by a scary individual called Chris. It is unclear how this person ended up in middle of nowhere. Could he have been responsible for the vehicle fire which caused the detour? We'll never know. The film is only concerned with the predicament in front of us and has no time for exposition at this time. We're as much in the dark as the School Bus Club.
However when the bus breaks down, the real threat is revealed: a bat-like creature which feeds off blood and is hypersensitive to light. Unfortunately, the cinematography in this film is so dark it is very difficult to make out any details about its appearance. However we can say that it shrieks a lot (perhaps a bat-like radar capability) and shuffles around incredibly slowly. Even so, it manages to abduct on of the kids right under their noses - somehow stealthy, strong and quick when the script calls for it to be.
What becomes clear, after a while, is that the film is less concerned with putting the School Bus Club in any real peril, more that it wants the gang to experience an adventure which will help each of them grow and people and strengthen their bond. As they become stronger together and understand their foe better, the less scary the creature becomes. By the end of the film, you could be forgiven for sympathising with it in light of how the gang gleefully deal with it.
THE VERDICT
Shortcut is the John Hughes teen horror movie he never got to make - the one with the psycho killer and bat creature. Just listen to the voiceover at the end and you will see that this is the horror version of The Breakfast Club. Other than some overly dark scenes, there is little wrong here except the script, which can't decide what abilities its creature has and provides zero exposition or context in one area while saturating us with detail in another. it should be noted that the young cast, some off whom working on their first feature, all did a great job.