I didn't think there was any more ground to cover in the slasher genre and then along comes this movie which is basically a killer on a mountain bike trail. I wonder what's next: A killer in a climbing gym? Murders on a bunny hill? As much as we sometimes poke fun at the done-to-death slasher genre, I still watch them and can almost always find something to enjoy even when the movie is terrible. It may have a few good effects, some silly dialogue that is worth a chuckle or two, or a gratuitous nude scene. When I heard the concept for this one, I couldn't resist.

Anne (Rebecca Palmer) is a bike courier with a pleasant boyfriend who decides one night to have sex with a mysterious bike cop. The night of passion gets a little rough and Anne regrets what she has done. Rather than tell her boyfriend, Michael, outright about her tryst, she agrees to go to a cabin in the woods with him so that they can enjoy the great outdoors on their mountain bikes. On their first ride down a closed trail, Anne cannot hold in her secret any longer so she tells Michael about her unfaithful tendencies. Before he can get too upset, his throat is sliced open by the gear wheel of an airborne bike and we discover that Anne's one-night stand wants more than a little nookie. From here, we go through an hour of the crazed biker chasing Anne through the forest and violently murdering anyone who stands in his way. Eventually he catches up to her and brings her back to a cabin so that he can finish what he started.

The plot of this film is fairly nonsensical and convoluted. On the surface, it appears as though the killer's motivation is just that he is a maniac. As the movie progresses, it seems to go a little deeper than that although not much is explained about why he is chasing her or why her has 'unstoppable killer' powers like making a car engine fail to start at a key moment or some Jason-style quick teleportations from being behind Anne to in front of her. He doesn't have much trouble keeping up with Anne as she makes some incredibly stupid decisions such as, on one occasion, choosing her bike to escape rather than a vehicle and trying to call for help from a cell phone atop a mountain without mentioning that it has a giant cross on top of it. She spends most of the movie screaming and riding around and it seems to me that she probably could have made better use of her time. Then again, I have never been chased by a bonkers biker so who am I to judge?

The last act of the film quietens down considerably and is somewhat depressing and horrific in what is done to Anne. All the pretentious babble from the killer was a little much for me, however, as his voice sounded more like a British art snob than a guy who cuts people in half. I shouldn't judge a killer by his voice though as murderers in Europe may enjoy mountain biking and Marc Chagall.

Stylistically, this is not your typical slasher flick. It is a German film with an English cast and has a European flair to it with plenty of close-ups and skewed angles to keep the viewer interested. The camera never stops moving with lots of whip pans and zooms to keep things off-kilter. I was expecting something more like the snowboarder slasher flick Shredder than an arty, violent downer. For what this movie is, this style did not work very well as there are a few times where a cool shot is inappropriately placed in the middle of chase sequence such as a scene atop a mountain that felt like it only occurred so that the director could incorporate a symbolic image that he probably had in a dream. The movie drifts between a mountain bike massacre and a slow-burn stalker film and would have been better served going one way or the other. As a combo it doesn't work. (Josh Pasnak, 2/6/08)

Directed By: Robert Krause.
Written By: Robert Krause, Florian Puchert.

Starring: Rebecca Palmer, Ben Price, Tom Frederic, J.J. Straub.