Gory Ditched Doesn’t Deliver the Goods
There’s a good movie hiding somewhere inside of Ditched. The premise is solid. The casting of a couple of key roles is spot-on. Filmmaker Christopher Donaldson stages some playfully lethal moments that caught me unaware. The initial setup to all of the cutthroat depravity is intriguing. There is a sense of disquieting menace permeating every frame during those opening moments, all of it revolving around a disparate group of characters discovering en masse how much danger they are all unexpectedly in.
If only the finished motion picture delivered on all of the promise inherent in those statements. Watching this was as frustrating a 90 minutes as I’ve had in ages. Donaldson can’t seem to decide if his ghoulish scenario should be played for satirically knowing laughs or instead treated with something bordering on didactic sincerity. It’s a grindhouse exploitation endeavor that’s a Twilight Zone morality tale played straight and a gimmicky EC Comics entry à la Tales from the Crypt, both at the same time.
I do love that setup, though. During what was supposed to be a routine prisoner transport, veteran paramedic Melina (Marika Sila) awakens in an overturned ambulance with one of her charges strapped to a gurney and virtually no one else to be found. She is quickly joined by a collection of additional survivors, including a pair of police officers, additional paramedics, and even another prisoner.
It is soon clear that their vehicles have been purposefully thrown down into a secluded ditch deep in the forest no more than a few 100 feet from the highway. They are being stalked by a murderous collection of marauders who have meticulously planned this event and handpicked all of the individuals they intend to slaughter. Holed up in the ambulance, Melina is insistent she is going to survive the night, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to make that proclamation a reality.
I find it best to be a little vague as to who is who and why all of this is taking place. Donaldson’s script goes out of its way to hold back that information, and while he’s not entirely successful concealing all of the various twists and turns, I do give him props for the effort. Basically, this is a chicken coming home to roosts situation, everyone’s past – no matter how spotless it may look on paper – catching up with them in the form of masked killers determined to get what they perceive as justice.
That’s fine. I like the idea, and the talented Sila is up to the challenge of portraying the primary protagonist who hasn’t the first clue why she’s been chosen to be amongst this group and marked for extermination with extreme prejudice. It’s the execution that’s lacking, the shifts in tone coupled with budgetary limitations and some strange technical hiccups making all of this far more difficult to endure than it otherwise should be.
One of the primary issues I had was keeping track of how big and deep the ditch was. An unmarked cop car has also been forced off the road, and Donaldson has the darndest time visually cementing the distance between the two vehicles. At some moments it feels like they’re right next to one another. At others, it’s like characters have to run the 100-meter dash to travel from one wreck to the other. Additionally, it’s impossible to know how dense the forest surrounding them is, making the appearance of each of the killers as they materialize as if out from nowhere more confounding than scary.
As stated, Sila is quite good, and her fiercely resolute performance goes a long way in keeping things interesting. Veteran B-movie and television character actor Mackenzie Gray also makes a lasting impression, but I’d rather not go into detail on his character as who he is and his motivations are supposed to be something of a surprise. Lastly, the gore effects are excellent and not for the squeamish, a couple of the more gnarly bits sending a cascade of shivers down my spine even as they had me giggling in juvenile euphoria.
I wish I liked Ditched more because there are some strong aspects to Donaldson’s debut worth celebrating. But the film isn’t enjoyable, and for all its clever bits, countless others fall annoyingly short of the mark. This is one of those times where I wanted to enjoy the finished product far more than I actually did, and in some ways that makes this one even more disappointing than it would have been had it just been terrible from the jump.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
