Actress Brandy Rainey steps into the director’s chair with her new short film The Snake Pit. It’s a traditional horror film set in the back woods of some backwater rural community, complete with inbred rednecks, hot teenage chicks, and a general fear of those who refuse to change with the times and cast off the pre-sixties conservative view that sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll will only lead to no good. Mostly, this theme usually comes out in horror films by making the point that cities = good, farms and rural areas = bad. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did this the best in 1974, but it’s something we continue to see in modern horror films like Cabin Fever, 2001 Maniacs, and Wrong Turn. Hicks are scary, and teenagers are always in danger when they leave their homes and drive around in big oversized vans or SUV’s. The danger triples if anyone in the group is wearing a tank top...

Okay, so, what’s the weak point? Maybe the plot. It’s not a bad plot; it’s just not very original. This story feels more like a clip from a larger movie. The well-acted characters never get a chance to truly develop beyond their stereotypes because there isn’t enough time. They represent the classic clichés often utilized in this strange “Hansel and Gretel” setting: the voice of reason, which warns against entering the Gingerbread House, and the voice of bravado that insists that there is nothing to fear.

I will say this; Rainey’s plot does come with a twist. You don’t expect the twist. And it is terrifying. But somehow, I feel disappointed that I did not see more blood and snakes. Yes, more snakes. The doomed youths find themselves stranded at a Snake Pit, something akin to one of those creepy Snake Farms you’ll see when driving through Arkansas or Texas, but only one or two real snakes feature in the movie, and the implicit violence doesn’t come with much gore. The monumental headache that would come with using real poisonous snakes in an independent feature can only conjure up images of thousands of dollars of liability insurance in my head, but as a viewer I was lured in by the title and wanted more.

The Snake Pit is a scary short, even if it doesn’t break new ground in horror filmmaking. It’s an exercise in traditional horror values and characters. It’s got a few snakes. There are tank tops and attractive youths who meet an ill fate. And there are some awesomely un-P.C. stereotypes of rural white Americans that for some reason are commonly accepted in society as “not racist”. I love un-P.C. No matter what society deems as “unacceptable”, we’ll always be able to poke fun at the poor, uneducated, and uncouth white Americans who live in sparsely populated areas of the countryside. And make them villains in horror films.