Movie Review: Tennessee Gothic (2019)

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Tennessee Gothic is an independent horror film written and directed by Jeff Wedding, and based on the short story “American Gothic” by Ray Russell (Premature Burial, Chamber of Horrors, The Incubus). It is about a girl who escapes being beaten and raped and is found on the side of the road by a local who brings her back to his farm.

This film is a bit different than most horror films, so it would be difficult to review in the traditional sense. So we decided to take a different approach as we do with some of these types of films, and list some things we liked, what we thought could have been better, and our overall thoughts.

What we liked:

  • The film was shot in 16mm, and it looked fantastic. We wish more films were shot like this, especially independent films. Low-budget films look much better when they look a bit grainy. When everything is crystal-clear, it only really benefits higher-budget films that have the proper lighting and professional crew to make it worth the HD. Shooting it in 16mm made it seem more old-school, it complimented the cinematography well, and this was a great use of it.
  • Despite being mostly inexperienced, the acting was really good for what it was. There were some comedic elements to this film, but the cast did a pretty good job.
  • The soundtrack for this film was great. Most indie films use local bands that just aren’t that good or don’t fit in with the film. In this case, it was good.
  • The ending of this film was good and brought some much-needed closure to the story.

What we thought could have been better:

  • As mentioned above, the ending was really good, but the rest of the film rarely had any actual substance. In the trailer, it appeared as though this was a horror/comedy, but there isn’t a lot of horror, or “comedy”. It would have been nice to see more actual story than what was shown.

Overall, we feel like Tennessee Gothic was a decent film, but instead of 80% of the film being used to focus on the promiscuity of the farm girl, there should have been more actual horror. While there is a reason for said promiscuity, centralizing the story on that made the overall vibe of the film very overexaggerated on the silly side. It seemed more like it was just repetitive than it was “comedy”. If the film had mixed in some more scenes here and there where something else was happening, it would have been a much better experience on the horror side of things.

Tennessee Gothic was released 10/15/2019 and is available on VOD and Blu-Ray from GypsyRoot Releasing.