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Before star Ashley Greene blew up by being cast in Twilight, this movie was called Summer’s Blood, a title which makes a whole hell of a lot more sense.  But with the success of that teeny vamp movie, the movie was re-branded and the cover art tweaked to make Greene look more like a vampire, despite that having nothing to do with the story.

In said story, Greene plays Summer Matthews, a girl drifting across the country in search of her biological father.  After a run in with the law, she accepts some help and a ride from the small town cute guy who obviously has something a bit fishy going on.  No time is wasted in putting Summer in a bad spot and soon she’s chained up in the basement.  It’s then the movie takes a strange turn as Summer begins identifying with her captor, though the true horror of the family is yet to be revealed.

Kills

By the time the credits roll, six people have seen their last moon rise.

Ills

We see a bloody body, there is a bullet to the head, some off screen stabbing, an off screen gunshot to the chest, some more stabbings, and another headshot.  Not too great on the ol’ blood-o-meter.

Lust

Ashley Greene is pretty hot.  There is a sex scene, but we don’t see anything.  There is a hot blonde chick with perky nipples, but only seen through a shirt.  There’s a second sex scene and a little incest mixed in for good measure.  We also almost see a boob.  Almost.

Learning

If you’re pretty sure you come from a dysfunctional family, don’t try to put it back together.

Review

First the good – the film is well shot.  It looks good.  The story is actually pretty interesting.

Now the bad – the acting is bad.  The story is executed poorly.

There is a whole Patty Hearst thing going on here.  She is kidnapped, but then starts to relate to her attacker.  Or does she?  It would be really interesting if it was totally clear what she was doing was manipulative to escape her situation.  But it’s almost impossible to tell if she’s being sincere or not.  It’s confusing and the acting is muddled.  If she is playing a game, that’s cool.  If she’s really supposed to be in love with the dude, it’s terrible acting.  It’s really just a shame that the film falls apart at the most interesting part.

There is about twenty-minutes of movie left after that where the father figure comes home to play and this is pretty interesting too.  It works for awhile and ends unpredictably, but despite a cool spot here and there, you mostly ask yourself why this didn’t work better.  All the right ideas are in place, but too much time is spent establishing a few areas, leading to all the good parts being rushed in favor of more exposition of the next part of the story.

While Summer’s Moon isn’t a complete waste of time, it’ll mostly be remembered, shortly, for the premise and what could have been, not ultimately what was.