As if relations between the sexes weren’t strained enough already, along comes Black Rock, a new thriller from writer Mark Duplass (from everything) and director Katie Aselton (The Freebie) that looks like it’s going to fan the flames further, ensuring that we get at least another year of clueless nincompoops publicly declaring their unsettling opinions about rape.
The basic story follows three ladies (Aselton, Lake Bell, and Kate Bosworth) who trek out to an isolated island where they used to have camping trips when they were young; you know, to rekindle lost youth or something. When they’re out there though, the island proves to not be as isolated as they thought. They happen upon a group of three very male hunters (Will Bouvier, Jay Paulson, and Anslem Richardson), one of the ladies gets a little frisky with a bearded gentleman around the campfire, and then he gets way handsy and his buddies suddenly turn super-psychotic.
While it doesn’t seem like this story ever reaches Straw Dogs or I Spit on Your Grave levels of grossness, things then degenerate into a battle of survival between the sexes that seems to have more than a little bit of that revenge movie/backwoods horror vibe crossed with a smidge of the Surviving the Game/Hunger Games man-being-hunted trope.
Sound like this movie has everything? Heck yeah it does. Just listen to that epic orchestra music playing over its new trailer’s climax—this is probably the most mainstream thing Duplass has ever had his name attached to. Will the public bite though? Is there enough juice out there surrounding gender issues for this film to tap into the cultural consciousness and line its makers’ pockets with coin? We’ll have to wait for the film’s May 17 release to find out.
For now, check the trailer out and try to ignore any horrible comments that may appear in the comments section below. It’s just the Internet, no big whoop. [Yahoo! Movies]