Putevoy obkhodchik (2007)

Director:

Igor Shavlak

Writers:

Valery Krechetov (screenplay)
Viktor Sorokin (screenplay)

Release Date:

13 September 2007 (Russia)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Plot Keywords:

Ghost House Underground

Cast

Dmitri Orlov	...	Grom
Svetlana Metkina	...	Katya
Aleksandr Vysokovskiy	...	Pakhomov
Yuliya Mikhailova	...	Olga
Aleksey Dmitriev	...	Trackman
Oleg Kamenshchikov	...	Irkut
Tomas Motskus	...	Kostya
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Svetlana Gudkova
Igor Shavlak	...	Colonel

Also Known As:

Путевой обходчик (Russia)
Trackman (International: English title)

Country:

Russia

Language:

Russian

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:Unrated (DVD rating)

Filming Locations:

Moscow, Russia

Company:

Importfilm

Been there, seen this... a lot better

Trackman could as well be an American movie if you replace the Russian cliché actors with their Hollywood clichés. The whole thing is pretty much ripped from other movies and stretched to the limit. It starts in a pretty modern way where 2 bank robbers make their plan in a McDonalds, time switching to the later bank robbery and back. Although I liked the beginning of the movie it seemed a unnatural and like the director begging to be different. Anyway, we've seen this... although not in a horror movie. So what next... After the robbery fails they take hostages and hide... oh yeah .... in an old abandoned metro tunnel system under a junkyard. You can guess whats coming from that point. Now you got 4 gangsters and 3 hostages to go for a killer who lives down there and has a strange interest in his victims eyes. The whole thing makes absolutely no sense... so the typical comment of one gangster "Did you hear the tale of a mutated maniac living down here" is totally nullified with the ending which is trying to give an endless 80 slasher-minutes some meaning and fails miserably because it makes absolutely no sense with a killer having his eyeball-collection office installed down there. If the movie sticked to its slasher basics maybe it could have succeeded with the eerie atmosphere in the tunnels but still most of the time nothing is happening and the eeriness wears off after seeing dark empty tunnels with something moving far away for the 100th time. The kills are boring, the acting not too convincing and the back story seems too constructed trying to get out of its genre barriers but stumbling across its many plot holes. If you like dark empty tunnels and pickaxe-murders with wielding goggles mixed in with some real annoying modern editing and action-elements thrown in... go ahead. I guess the ending will ruin it even for you... the escape sequence on the motorcycle is beyond laughable.