Summer’s Moon (2009) DVD

“In a stinkin’ world like this, you need something that you can rely on, and you know what that is? It’s family.”

So says Gant (Pontypool’s Stephen McHattie), patriarch of the tight-knit yet dysfunctional Hoxey clan, in the opening scene, as the camera surveys in a slow pan the aftermath of his latest act of fatally torturous violence in a shabby motel room. Originally called Summer’s Blood, Lee Demarbre’s film may have been inexplicably retitled Summer’s Moon for UK viewers, but there is no mistaking this film’s focus on blood – and blood in more than one sense, as the ties of kinship that bind also keep a family slaying together.

As Gant continues his killing spree on the road, young delinquent Summer (Twilight’s Ashley Greene) drifts into the small town of Massey, with a gun in her duffel bag, an old photo in her pocket, and a whole lot of attitude. She is looking for the father who never knew she existed, and there is no doubt she knows how to handle both herself and any unwelcome male advances. Nonetheless, after spending the night with local charmer Tom (Peter Mooney), she finds herself chained to a soil bed in his cellar, as the latest ‘flower’ in his human nursery.

If Tom is a common-garden psychopath, it is only because the fruit has not fallen far from the tree. After all, his mother Gaia (Barbara Niven) indulges her son’s unhealthy pastime, while it was his absent father who introduced him, when still a boy, to the dark joys of the basement. Summer soon realises that if she is going to survive, she has to find a way to fit in with this family – but who would guess that it would come so naturally to her?

Like Steven Sheil’s Mum & Dad (2008), but set solely in Ontario, Summer’s Moon uses recognisable elements from the killer-thriller and even some (restrained) ‘torture porn’ to frame a broader debate about nature and nurture. Its low budget occasionally shows, and Demarbre’s direction is at times clunkily pedestrian, but there is definitely something to the film’s genetic themes and ambiguous ending that might just broaden the horizons of any Greene fans who have come expecting another Twilight – while in a typically captivating performance as the ultimate bad dad, McHattie proves once again (as he did in the sublime Pontypool) that nothing can keep him from ruling the horror roost.

Anton Bitel