Driftwood

So there’s this “Attitude Adjustment Camp” in Florida like those ones in Utah where parents send their troubled kids to hang out with each other under the supervision of ex-marine survivalist types. One of these troubled kids is David Forrester who is not related to the Forrester kid from Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester. David (played by some Disney channel kid named Ricky Ullman) gets sent to the camp after his parents read his journal or his blog where he writes a lot of stuff about death. He’s emo or goth or whatever. His older, rock star brother recently died of an overdose and David wasn’t coping with it very well. Instead of having him see a psychiatrist/therapist, his parents decide to spend an inordinate amount of money to send him to Diamond Dallas Page’s hell camp. The name of the camp is Driftwood which is also conveniently the title of the movie.

When David gets to the camp, he meets the headmaster (DDP) who wears a cowboy hat and who goes by the name “Captain”. Captain is a mean dude; he’s intimidating and he yells a lot. He makes the troubled teens rake up piles of twigs and throw them in dumpsters. I guess this is what passes for hard labor at Driftwood. David shares a room with some other bad attitude type kids. They try to act tough and hardcore but it’s obvious that they are a bunch of actors trying to portray a stereotype. The two Hispanic teens are laughably terrible, especially in a scene where they almost get into a fight; they actually “front” each other.

The meat of the story revolves around the mystery of some kid that was killed at the camp prior to David’s arrival. David keeps seeing the kid’s clown-faced looking ghost walking the halls at night. The explanation for how David can see ghosts is that ever since his brother died, he can see ghosts. Cool. I got no problem with that. Keep it simple. David gets in trouble for following the ghost around at night. He has to run the gauntlet, an obstacle course that involves running between some logs and climbing a short wall, while his camp-mates hit him with sticks. I’m getting bored thinking about it while writing this review. Here are a few words for you: guns, father/daughter relationship, accusations of homosexuality, beer drinking, raking, record collection liaison, betrayal, solitary confinement, chapel fire, ghost karate, basement brick wall, guns again.

I wouldn’t classify this movie as horror; I’d classify it as bung rot. Actually, it’s not that bad. It’s mediocre. Mediocrity. It’s directed by Tim Sullivan. He previously directed the sequel to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 film, Two Thousand Maniacs. Sullivan’s sequel is called 2001 Maniacs and was released in 2005 by Eli Roth’s now defunct Raw Nerve production company. 2001 Maniacs has lots of gore, cheesy humor, and boobs. Driftwood has none of these attributes. It instead tries to be a moody, supernatural type film. The problem with this approach is that this film is not scary or intense or eerie or creepy. I never felt uneasy or uncomfortable during the movie. This type of film needs to create a sense of dread in order to be effective (see Lucky McKee’s The Woods or Nick Hamm’s The Hole). On a positive note, I like how the director exposes some of the problems with these “Attitude Adjustment Camps”. I wish he would have spent more time on that.

PS: This is the second movie I’ve seen recently that stars DDP, the other being Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror. I’m not sure what that means.