Ok I got into this and thought it was pretty decent until it just wasn't.

The highlights:

Luke Baines is creepy looking so he fit the bill for his role. I feel bad for his "sidekick" though cause he was reduced to letting his belly hang out and having his head and eyebrows whited out for affect.

The lead actress held my interest and was not boring to watch.

The lead up seemed good.

The lowlights:

Who is the main character? What do we know about her backstory? She seems too intelligent to just plop down in some boring town working as a cashier with a scanner that doesn't work. Where does that happen? I've never been to any store where the scanner never gets fixed. I've been told that some stores time their cashiers on how fast they are since time is money so why would this store not address something that's vital to their operations and bottom line? If that's the only thing the writers could think of to stretch out that scene so the killer could make small talk with her then these movie studios just aren't trying at all. We don't know a lot about the main character. It annoys me that she seems strong and independent yet the first creepy photographer who tells her to leave town with him and she takes little convincing.

Kenny Wormald looks like a cartoon character and is a total goob. He is hard to watch onscreen. Why are they trying to make this guy "happen"? Seriously! Doesn't everyone want to act nowadays? These studios are either too lazy to try to find good actors or they know their movie is crap so they just don't care. He added nothing to the movie and when he died I was like "ok good".

Kal Penn - his role was too much for this film. It wasn't good - it was just plain annoying. I feel bad for him that this is the kind of role he's not only offered BUT actually taking.

They rent an expensive looking house for their stay in town...yet they fail to verify if there's cell phone service? Who builds a huge mansion yet says "Cell phone service? No thanks I'll pass. I mean it's only a way of life in this present day but nah I'm good." WTH?! Pretty much everywhere has service. You're trying to tell us someone with a lot of money to build that house is just gonna somehow be a backwoods person deep down? They want a mansion but they'll just make arts and crafts while they live there since they can't get service. BUT that makes it convenient to the story so they expect you to suspend belief that a house like that would have no service. And if this is a big time photographer renting the place wouldn't that be a major requirement before they signed on the dotted line?

Also the house looks brand new yet when the lead tries to open the upstairs window to escape - the handle not only breaks off it cuts her hand really deeply. I don't think so.

Finally I kept waiting for the ending to be rewarding. The main character presented all tough throughout the movie yet in the end she's all of a sudden reduced to a sobbing, begging mess? And I realize that we aren't gonna make any sense out of a serial killer's motives but still give us something. THEN after all that it starts all over again with another girl...the actress from Even Stevens of all people (how are we supppsed to take that seriously?) Is that suppposed to be some kind of set up for a sequel?

Bottom line - it had potential but in the end you're left feeling duped.

Colleen (Claudia Lee) is a check out girl in the small town of Spearfish, S.D. (actual place filmed on location). She finds photos of what appear to be dead girls with the face mutilated beyond recognition. The cops can't find a crime or anything illegal. She is on her own. We know she has a boyfriend Ben (Toby Hemingway) she has been blowing off. Peter Hemmings (Kal Penn) is an obnoxious photographer from the same town. He reads Colleen's blogs about the photos and opts to take his crew of models to Spearfish to shoot them in death poses. Rose (Miranda Rae Mayo) is one of the models and the current girlfriend of Peter and they carry on a love-hate relationship filled with barbs.

We see the killers, first with masks and then without. Their characters were never developed. The theme is stated early on "There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit". - William S. Burroughs

Peter builds upon that theme and claims, "We covet what we see everyday" i.e. the cashier in a way is a local celebrity, seen and admired by many.

The film also used some decent "B" stars, one of which I really liked and they wax her in the first scene. Kal Penn carried much of the film with his lines and eccentric nonsense. And while this was a "slasher" film in that people are horrifically killed, it didn't feel like a slasher as the photography displaced much of it. The film is more developed than most horrors, but (plot spoiler?) there is no clever twist.

Guide: F-word, sex, nudity (Autumn Kendrick) throats cut, blood squirts.

Store clerk Colleen (a fine and appealing portrayal by Claudia Lee) receives gruesome photos of women who appear to have been savagely murdered. Are said photos staged? Or are they for real?

Director/co-writer Nick Simon relates the absorbing story at a snappy pace, ably crafts a creepy and unsettling atmosphere, generates a good deal of tension, and pours on the bloody'n'brutal violence in the splatterific last twenty minutes. Moreover, the harsh take-no-prisoners tone really amps up at the chilling conclusion. The sound acting from the capable cast helps a lot, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Kal Pen as jaded and cynical renegade hipster artist Peter Hemmings, Kenny Wormald as nice guy Chris, Miranda Rae Mayo as snarky assistant Rose, Katharine Isabelle as the ill-fated Janet, and Mitch Pileggi as the earnest Sheriff Porter. Luke Baines as soft-spoken psycho Tom makes for a seriously scary and unnerving piece of freaky work. Dean Cundey's sharp widescreen cinematography provides a pleasing polished look. Nima Fakhrara's shivery score hits the shuddery spot. A worthy entry in the slasher horror genre.