Written by Daniele Cosci
Directed by Alessio Liguori
Starring Jack Kane, Zak Sutcliffe, Andrei Claude, Sophie Jane Oliver and Terence Anderson
Running time: 1 hour and 20 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language throughout and some bloody images

by Alex Rudolph

At the beginning of the new British horror film Shortcut, five teens and an adult driver take a bus on a ride that will change their fates forever. We know this because one of them literally says, in voiceover, "Nobody could imagine that [the ride] would change our fates forever." I don't need horror to be subtle, but I'd rather it not tell me its plot via "In a world..." auto-complete cliches.

A few minutes after that, the radio announces an eclipse: "This eclipse will be one of the longest and most fascinating lunar eclipses of the last century. So tonight we encourage you all to lift your heads to the sky and take in this spectacular and unique event." When a drifter hijacks the bus in the next scene, he holds a gun to a teen's head and says, "I know what death tastes like and it tastes... delicious." When I think about movies like Shortcut, I think about Mark Borchardt's (in American Movie) plan to fund his opus by cranking out a horror flick he can sell at conventions. The bottom fourth of every genre's IMDB listings are full of movies that feel like diluted copies of its most popular examples, but horror especially gathers entries that just kind of exist. They aren't good, there isn't much flavor, but they also aren't terrible. It's possible they just exist for the curious convention attendee, or, more likely in 2020, an undiscerning fan scrolling through a streaming service's New Releases section.

And so, the five teens are steered into the woods by the drifter (guess what happens to the authority figure driving the bus?). Part of the remainder of the movie is spent trapped in the bus, part of it is spent running around a sewer system. When Shortcut finally settles down and gives the teens some room to act, they're good. They're freaked out, but in the shamed way high schoolers are, which is to say they're determined to not appear freaked out in front of their peers. The movie doesn't do enough with the kids to earn its Breakfast Club homage at the end, but the actors are good enough that you can pretend you've been watching them discover the overlaps in their personalities, rather than come to the realization they're all basically the same person.

The John Hughes nod is telling of Shortcut's wishy-washy tone. Sometimes the score is all strings, sometimes it's the "DUN dun'' of Ennio Morriconne's score for The Thing. Sometimes it's a church choir, sometimes it's a synthy throwback that has more in common with Stranger Things' score than it does the 80s scores it ostensibly references. The movie doesn't know where to stay, which could have meant a grab bag of styles but ends up meaning it can't nail anything. The scares aren't scary and the jokes aren't particularly funny. That, oddly, doesn't mean you're watching a bad movie, it just means you get a little surprised when it becomes a good one.

At the end, the teens read a note from an adult, who recalls a traumatic event from his own past. The adult didn't see his detour into smoothed-out Stephen King land coming. "Nobody," he writes, "believes in the big bad wolf... until it crosses their path." It's stilted, especially compared to the relatively natural teen dialogue. It also doesn't mean much, even with the dramatic ellipses. Nearly every horror movie is about people who don't expect to be terrorized. The note goes on to quote the bible about light and darkness, a reference point and dichotomy older than the bible itself.

Shortcut is available to watch on demand today.