Search - Driftwood on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 4/8/2023...

Inflated Amazon ratings, low budget amateur movie. Keep walking!

Throw this DVD in the HOLE

JC | New York | 01/03/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Did we watch the same movie? Are all you guys friends with the director and producer? After seeing the 5 star rating I thought what the hell. Boy, was I wrong. I kept watching, hoping it would get better but it just never did. Why was this rated R too? The MPAA is so offbase half the time. Anyway, this was like watching an Afterschool special. "The film also has a fantastic performance from Diamond Dallas Page"? You have to be kidding! The acting was mediocre at best, the so called mystery was pretty easy to figure out and if you think just flashing a quick ghostly image and turning up the volume produces scares it doesn't. The story was somewhat original but intense and scary, you guys are dead wrong!"

Filmmaker Tim Sullivan Shows Us He's More Than Just A Maniac

M. K. Matecheck | Tampa, FL United States | 08/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Filmmaker Tim Sullivan Shows Us He's More Than Just A Maniac

Imagine you are sixteen years old and you've just lost your idol, best mate and older brother to drugs. Suddenly life seems to only be about death. You've got a hole in you the size of Texas and all you can think about is dying just so you can maybe be with your brother again. To cope with this, you start keeping a blog and pour out your deepest, darkest feelings in the hope of somehow purging yourself of those demons. Then your parents find this blog, read it and assume that you are on the fast track to a massive downfall. And then, to top off all this agony, your parents decide to put you in an 'attitude-adjustment camp' called Driftwood to get you back on the right track. You are there until you turn eighteen years old. You have no rights, no freedom and no hope for escape.

That is the absolute nightmare faced by David Forrester (played by Ricky Ullman, star of the Disney Channel's Phil Of The Future), the protagonist of Driftwood. Upon arriving at the camp, he first meets the man who runs Driftwood (and surely will run David's life), Captain Doug Kennedy (fiercely played by wrestler-turned-actor Diamond Dallas Page). The two characters are almost immediately at loggerheads as David is no shrinking violet. Quite the opposite, David has no problem telling The Captain (or anyone else within earshot) exactly what he thinks of his situation and the camp. David is so strong and obstinate, in fact, that you wince with the anticipation of what awful things await him, for surely he will not be able to hold his tongue.

Very soon after arriving at Driftwood, David starts having incredibly unsettling visions of another young man who is seemingly trying to tell him something. He leads David into a corridor on his first night in the camp where David comes across a wall of photos of the young men currently interred at Driftwood. One photo is conspicuously askew, and there is no name under it. When David asks fellow inmate Noah (Jeremy Lelliot) who's in the photo, Noah clearly doesn't want to answer. As time goes by, David continues to see visions of this young man all around the camp, and soon he finds himself filled with questions. Who is this kid? What happened to him? What's really going on at Driftwood?

Ricky Ullman has got quite a future ahead of him, if his performance in Driftwood is any indication. And if he went into this project with hopes of shedding his Disney image, I think he accomplished that in spades. There are a myriad of emotions David goes through in the course of this tale, and Ullman portrays each and every one of them so convincingly that you feel those emotions right along with him.

The film also has a fantastic performance from Diamond Dallas Page (The Devil's Rejects), who's brutal Captain Kennedy is the ultimate bully. Page also gives you fleeting moments of insight into the Captain's vulnerability, which is a rarity with this kind of character (and that speaks volumes about the calibre of the writing on this flick as well). Jeremy Lelliot (7th Heaven, Smallville), who's character Noah is faced with the horror of trying to be `cured' of his homosexuality, has a standout performance as well. And Talan Torriero (Laguna Beach) is very memorable as The Captain's henchman.

Director Tim Sullivan has created a very realistically frightening world in Driftwood. There's no boogey man here. Freddie's not going to kill anyone while they're sleeping at this camp. There's only the harsh reality of a teenager who's rights have been taken away by well-meaning but incredibly clueless parents (convincingly portrayed by the brilliant Lin Shaye and Marc McClure) who, in desperation, turn to The Captain and his camp to make their little boy all better again. There's also a great mystery in the film as you discover, along with David, the answers to all of his questions about the sad, ghostly young man he sees everywhere.

If you're a fan of 2001 Maniacs (and how could you not be?), Tim Sullivan's previous film, don't expect the same black humor-laced, gore-soaked, balls-out romp. This is not a sequel to Maniacs, by any stretch (but Sullivan does have that in the works anyway, so be patient). As Sullivan once said, "I like directors like, say Robert Wise, who one day is doing West Side Story and the next day he's doing The Haunting and the next day he's doing The Day The Earth Stood Still, next day he's doing Star Trek, then he's doing Sound Of Music, you know?" Clearly Sullivan is on his way to being the same kind of varied filmmaker, and I couldn't be happier.

So go see Driftwood with an open mind, expecting a great film. You won't be disappointed.

Slick Matecheck, Fangirl Magazine (www.fangirlmag.com)

"

FIRST LOOK: DRIFTWOOD

Michael Cucinotta | Long Island, NY | 08/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like one of the kids that finds himself held captive at "Driftwood", it's easy to misjudge Tim Sullivan's new film when you glance at the surface. It's got the kid from the Disney Channel, the wrestler, and that guy from the MTV reality show. It's probably pretty easy for a horror fan to immediately think "teen horror" and dismiss "Driftwood", but "Driftwood" is not "The Covenant in Boot Camp", it's not "Stay Alive In Reform School". If you're willing to toss this film based on the cast you've heard about, then really, "Driftwood" is exactly the kind of movie you need to see. The film opens up with David Forrester (Ricky Ullman) arriving, obviously by force, at the Driftwood boot camp. He soon learns his parents, still reeling from the death of his older brother and after misreading some of David's journal entries, have placed him in the custody of the camp until his 18th birthday. David, and the other boys he will soon meet, are overseen by the vicious Captain Kennedy (Dallas Page).Kennedy runs the camp with both an iron fist and a cruel, forced hierarchy amongst the other boys in the camp that often pits them against one another. It seems the easiest way for Kennedy to get away with his brand of violent discipline is to have the boys beating each other. By his first night in Driftwood, David is having strange visions of a ghostly figure. As the ghostly presence appears again and again, a dark and violent secret begins to reveal itself.Sullivan and his co-writer Chris Kobin really know how to write teen characters that aren't patronizing, dumb, or clichéd. They feel real, and that's something so rare in horror films. With strong writing like this, you need a cast that's going be able to take the character and really make them come alive.One of most surprising thing in "Driftwood" is the strength of the performances. (Ok, well maybe not that surprising considering I think Sullivan got the best performance out of Robert Englund in damn near a decade in "2001 Maniacs".) You're not getting flat, one-dimensional teen stock characters in "Driftwood". Ricky Ullman plays David with incredible depth. Dallas Page takes the roll of the cruel leader and creates a nasty, violent son-of-a-bitch you just want to kick in the nuts.More than that, Page is able, in the end, to show Kennedy as pathetic, worn, and broken that he even garners a slight bit of sympathy from us. Also, in his first film, Talan Torriero delivers a surprisingly solid performance as an upper-classman at Driftwood, one of Kennedy's lackeys. Talan shines at the climax of the film and truly adds to the intensity and suspense of these scenes.The supporting cast, including David's cellmates all stand out on their own. Again, it's surprising to see teen characters that are all different, without being caricatures. Lin Shaye also makes a brief, but very memorable, cameo as David's confused, misguided, but well meaning mother."Driftwood" is a very different film from Tim Sullivan, who's last film was the raunchy and tongue-in-cheek "2001 Maniacs". "Driftwood" is far more subtle in its horror. A quick glance of the ghost here, a little bit more of the horrifying truth revealed there, the story quietly unwinds. Sullivan uses the boot camp setting, with its inherent cruelty and violence to build incredible tension and suspense. It's a ghost story, of course, but it's clear there are a lot more horrifying things going on in Driftwood than a haunting.I was frequently reminded of one of my favorite 80's ghost stories, "Lady in White", in the way that the story was layered. It's a very well written mystery. It's not the supernatural elements of "Driftwood" that are frightening aspects of it. It's the idea of kids being thrown away by their parents, the idea of a man like Kennedy who's so lost in his obviously unreconciled past that he takes his anger out on innocent children with tragic results. What's terrifying about "Driftwood" is the realization as you leave the theater that while ghosts don't exist in the real world, camps like Driftwood, thrown away kids like David, and human monsters like Captain Kennedy really do. - Mike C."