Whenever my childhood Etch-A-Sketch decided to leave me a horribly cryptic message regarding bleak future events, I would immediately dismiss its crude, illegible warning with a snort, pop another Risperdal, and order my squadron of GI Joe figures to guard my spooky closet door with their insignificant lives. Had I known this seemingly useless time-wasting device could accurately predict the untimely demise of my immature, pot-smoking friends, I would have promptly sold this amazing contraption at the local flea market and used the proceeds to purchase a poorly-dubbed cassette of the B-52's Rock Lobster album. Opportunistic? With bells on, buddy.
After witnessing a similar series of events within directors Brendan Cowles and Shane Kuhn's goofy clown-oriented slasher Drive-Thru, I was left dumbstruck and drooling. Were my freak childhood memories somehow being channeled by a pair of up-and-coming horror filmmakers, or are the satanic powers found lurking deep inside my own Etch-A-Sketch slowly contaminating the entire world? Should I rush home to confront this evil creation armed with only a Zippo lighter and a generic pack of smokes, or should I consult with my ambulance-chasing lawyers about seeking financial retribution from a pair of guys who have raped and pillaged my deep-rooted childhood terrors?
Maybe I'll just pop another Risperdal and take a long nap, instead.
Unless you've accidentally misplaced your own lump of squishy gray matter, you shouldn't need a fortune-telling doodling device to uncover the fact that Drive-Thru is the latest LionsGate release that attempts to snatch a little green from the Velcro wallets of the horror-loving public without providing a high-quality product in exchange. While it never really succeeds at splitting your sides and dumping your steaming innards all over your brand new Disney-colored carpeting, this high-calorie 90-minute excursion into the dreaded horror/comedy universe should provide you and your illiterate friends with plenty of nifty late-night entertainment. As long as you don't expect too much from it, of course.
If Drive-Thru were a delicious all-beef hamburger value meal found only at participating locations, it would probably be listed as the Ho-Hum combo with no onions and extra cheese. Here's what's under the bun: Some axe-wielding nutjob in a pimped-out Horny the Clown outfit is slowly carving his way through the local teen population, starting with a group of white suburban thugs who make the deadly decision to stop at the local Hella Burger for a quick bite to eat. Soon he's moving onto sluts, stoners, and various other high school cliches we've seen way too many times to count. I'm getting gas just thinking about it.
Are these murders completely unrelated, or is there some mysterious underlying connection our heroes don't know about yet? Why is some random seventeen year-old rocker chick receiving psychic messages from the man responsible for these savage slayings? Does all of this nonsense have something to do with the Hella Burger president's dead son, or are these murders just the gory artistic expressions of a madman with a fast food fetish? More importantly, will you really care about anything you see in this movie once its finished inserting its greasy fingers into your easily amused ocular sockets?
Drive-Thru is essentially an off-brand pot of mystery meat constructed from a bevy of tasty genre livestock. The supposed story is supported with rusty plot devices borrowed from Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street entry, Cunningham's Friday the 13th franchise, a few loose boards from Halloween's house of horrors, and a several dozen useless one-liners discarded by various filmmakers who know better than to stick these groan-inducing clips and phrases into their actors' willing mouths. To say this flick is completely unoriginal and totally uninspired would be an understatement, a fact which is compounded tenfold when you consider all of the missed opportunities for fast food-related mayhem.
However, despite Cowles and Kuhn's obvious creative deficiencies, Drive-Thru still manages to provide an evening's worth of mildly engaging entertainment. It's stupid enough to operate as your prototypical brainless slasher, incorporating just enough humor to give you the feeling that nobody is taking this mess too seriously. If you still need further proof of the film's light-hearted nature, behold filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's strangely hilarious cameo as a befuddled Hella Burger employee faced with the daunting task of removing unruly teenagers from the restaurant's colorful play area. Still, the fast food motif isn't explored as deeply as its garish DVD artwork suggests, leaving this farcical film fiend craving seconds.
Did I enjoy watching Drive-Thru? You bet. Would I classify it as a good movie? Not on your best friend's baby's momma's life, dear readers. This is just another run-of-the-mill comedic slasher that borrows heavily from the films that influenced its dodgy creators. While the performances are decent, the gore is effective, and the production values are unusually high for this sort of picture, it still doesn't rise above its station as a throwaway slice of fast food entertainment. Furthermore, Drive-Thru never handles the material in a way that separates it from the forty-four other like-minded flicks currently clogging retail arteries as we speak.
And it doesn't even come with a cheap plastic toy.
