Halloween Horror Month - Rites of Spring

The film gets off to a bit of a jarring start for me when the opening titles tell us of the missing girls over the years, one of whom has the name Tara Grinstead. Turns out the filmmakers managed to pick the name of a real life missing person for an incidental part of their backstory, which didn't go over too well with some people. Awkward, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just managed to hit upon a rather macabre coincidence.

Then again, on the subject of coincidences, Rites of Spring relies on a lot of them for the plot. We start off with not one, but two plots - one is a farmer kidnapping women to apparently sacrifice to the cousin of He Who Walks Behind The Rows to ensure he gets a good harvest; the other is a group of kidnappers planning to hold the daughter of a rich businessman for ransom. It doesn't take anyone particularly genre savvy to realise that these two plots are going to collide and they do so, and messily at that. After that it's the survivors of the two groups running around an abandoned school trying to escape from the "Creature" (and whether intentionally or not, some of those scenes reminded me of some of the scenes from the Silent Hill game series). Other coincidences in the film include one of the kidnappers knowing one of the girls intended for sacrifice, as well as the fact that they also both know the father of the kidnap victim. Actually, I'm not too sure if these are coincidences so much as they are rather obvious tropes, as they're telegraphed right at the start of the film and so you'd only not have seen it coming if you hadn't paid attention to the opening five minutes.

Rites of Spring has a lot of stuff that's really, really obvious. If the title didn't clue you in to what was going on with all the missing women, you figure it out pretty quickly from the farmer's behaviour even before you see him praying to the giant goat-skulled idol in his cornfield. The kidnappers are a trope in themselves, consisting of the reluctant one, the girlfriend, the psychotic one and the one who's fate is to mess up and die first. It's also got plot holes-a-plenty, not the least of which is the throwaway implication that (highlight for spoiler) the whole town is in on the ritual sacrifice thing. Not to mention (highlight again) we're never shown what happens to the kidnapped girl. I suppose it's implied she ends up as a sacrifice as well, but she just disappears from the film abruptly and no-one asks about her.

All in all, Rites of Spring has some good ideas, but falls flat somewhat in their execution. That and the glaring plot holes and obvious plot twists make it something of a frustrating film to watch, because you just know it could have been better if it had tried just a little harder.