Movie Review: Clinton Road (2019)

Clinton Road is a horror film written by Derek Ross Mackay, and Steve Stanulis. It was also directed by Stanulis and Richard Grieco, which came as a surprise. It was his first non-TV directed feature, and while the directing wasn’t awful, it wasn’t good enough to save it from being bad overall.

The film starts off with the usual character development, which is happening at a nightclub that is run by a man played by Vincent Pastore (Sopranos) and also Ice-T. We don’t know how they were tricked into being part of this film, but they were probably the best thing about it. While we are on the subject of the nightclub, let’s take a moment to address the music selection for the nightclub scenes. It sounded like something with cheesy synth and a funky bassline like in the videogame Toe Jam and Earl. It was pretty bad. But that isn’t where the real trouble with this film lies.

The rest of the film was pretty lackluster in general. The club scene where all of the characters were introduced took way too long and wasted a lot of camera time. We are talking about 1/3 of the film. Then when they finally do make it to Clinton Road, nothing really makes any sense. They go wandering in the woods. There was some guy who randomly appeared who looked like Kerry King from Slayer. There were some random kids who weren’t really scary, and aside from that the wasn’t really any horror to be found here. A couple of people died, but it just wasn’t horrific at all.  It seemed like it was trying to be like The Blair Witch Project but ended up being more like a made-for-TV version you would see on Lifetime.

Overall, Clinton Road doesn’t have much to offer in the horror category. If anything, it was nice to see Ice-T and Vincent Pastore together in this, but we wouldn’t recommend this one. The acting was even decent when it came to the rest of the cast. Most of the problems are in the writing category. They needed more horror. Clinton Road seems like it could have been a great setting for it, so the premise wasn’t all that bad. But it just wasn’t executed well here.

If you would like to see this film when it releases, it will be in the following theaters starting June 14th:

Laemmle Music Hall, LA
Grant Theater, TX
Kent Theater, NY
Arizona Mills, Arizona
Gloucester Cinema, MA
Classic Cinemas, IL
Aurora Cineplex, Roswell GA
St Michael Cinema, St Michael MN
Atlas Cinemas, Mentor, Ohio

It will be available on VOD after it’s theatrical run.