Finally, finally, I have watched a great horror film.  After searching high and low, and waiting patiently (for the most part), I was not let down by Husk.

It’s a simple premise, really, a straight forward story.  Five friends are traveling to a lakeside getaway.  Scott, Chris, and Johnny are in high anticipation of the girls they can ogle and hook up with, and Brian is happy to be taking along his girlfriend, Natalie, who threatens to spoil the other guys’ fun–Brian is the party man who could wrangle the girls for his friends.  Along their journey through the heartland teeming with cornfields, crows dive and smash into the windshield of their vehicle causing them to wreck.

When the group wakes from the crash, they find Johnny missing from the car.  They speculate he has gone to get help.  Brian and Scott set out to find Johnny just in case something has happened to him.  Leaving the lonely stretch of road, Brian and Scott venture through the cornfield, finding a scarecrow, an old car, and a mailbox.  Climbing up the scarecrow, they see a house in the distance with a light on in an upstairs window.

The house, from all appearances, once they leave the tall stalks of corn and see it up close, looks as if it hasn’t been lived in for decades.  The inside only confirms all this.  Cautiously climbing the stairs the second level, they follow the sound of a sewing machine.  In the upper room they find Johnny, with nails driven through the fingers of his left hand, sewing a mask.  There is something in cornfield, a scarecrow, that kills those it can find and enslaves their bodies for use in its gruesome murders.  The house is the only safe place, but the group knows it can’t stay there forever, sooner or later they have to cross back through the corn.

Husk is low budget, but oh my, it is horror movie nirvana.  It takes off and doesn’t stop, and never misses a beat.  This is the best horror film I’ve seen in a very long time.  True, I’m not sure I exactly understand how everything “works” when it comes to the making of the masks; the scarecrow can’t step out of the cornfield, but the new victims the spirit possesses can cross into the house and sew.  That’s a little baffling, but it doesn’t matter–Husk is just so good, and so much fun, that it doesn’t have to make complete sense.  Maybe I’ll understand it better after repeat viewings.  And I could be wrong, but I don’t think the vehicles found at the farm should still be in working order, all gassed up and such.  But I’ll leave it to others to knit-pick, I’ll settle for just enjoying it.

The atmosphere is pitch perfect, the actors can really act.  Writer/director Brett Simmons has crafted a classic in my opinion.  Some may look at this movie and dismiss it as just another man-in-a-mask-slasher exercise, but it’s much more than another cheap Freddy, Jason, or Michael knock-off.  It doesn’t rely on gore for it’s horror, it has some genuine suspense and tension, and that’s no easy feat.  The fact that the spirit can inhabit one body at a time keeps you on your toes.

Comparisons can be made to the classic 1988 William Wesley film Scarecrows, to which Husk feels like a spiritual sequel.  Scarecrows didn’t blatantly explain itself, and Husk does, which is kind of a weak point.  But this is one of those rare movies that I’m glad it exists at all.

5 out of 5
the_novacula