The Shortcut Movie Review

The Shortcut is a 2009 horror movie directed by Nicholaus Goossen and starring Drew Seeley, Shannon Woodward and Dave Franco.

The movie begins in 1945 at Hartley High School. A couple take a shortcut through the woods. The boy gets a bit rough with the girl and he rapes her. He leaves her in the woods. A kid comes along and sees her. She asks him for help but he just hits her with a rock and kills her. Cut to present day and a kid called Tobey goes through the shortcut when he is dared by his friends. He finds a dead dog there. He sees an old guy and gets frightened. He goes home where he finds his brother, Derek(Seeley) and his friends Lisa(Woodward) and Mark(Franco). They see him covered in blood.
Tobey tells Derek what happened. A guy called Taylor finds out what happened with the dog and he tells Derek that his dog went missing and he wants to find out if his dog was taken by the old guy in the woods. He tells Derek that they will go and have a look around the old guy's place.

Derek's mother tells him about the shortcut. People disappeared in there. One of the Hartley were suspects. The son was called Ben and he was a problem child. The old man is the last of the Hartley's.
Taylor and Derek go the the shortcut and they see the old man. They run to his barn and look around. They find loads of dogs tags there. Harley realises that they are there. He chases them. They get away. Taylor thinks that Hartley is killing dogs. Lisa wants to investigate it too as well as Derek's love interest, Christy(Katrina Bowden). They all spy on Hartley. He shows up at Derek's work and spooks him. Cut back to the 1940's and Ben Hartley kills someone. The dad knows and he shoots a witness to the crime. Back to present day, Derek watched Hartley while the others look around his  place. Lisa sees newspaper clippings. They break into his house. He has a schoolroom in his house and he has jars with animal parts in them.

Taylor and Mark look in the basement. There is an old man chained to a bed. He asks them for help.
They let him out. The guy is a killer and he murders Mark and Taylor. Hartley comes back and he shoots at them. Derek shows up and he and Lisa look around. They fall into a pit of bones. Hartley finds them but Derek hits him and they run off. The old guy has Christy chained and he kills her in front of them. Derek tries to fight him. Lisa helps. Hartley stops Derek. Cut to 1955 and the older Hartley brother comes home and finds Ben chained up. The father has been covering for him. The two old guys are the Hartley brothers.  The old Ben is shot by his brother. The brother then shoots himself in front of Derek and Lisa. Derek's brother Tobey shoots Lisa dead. Derek drags her body away. Derek and Tobey are killers who murdered their own dad.

This was a fun movie. I liked the actors and the story wasn't bad. The ending was a little so so but I could forgive that. I enjoyed watching it and it was fun trying to figure out who the killer is. This is nothing new really, but you could watch a lot worse so I would say that if you enjoy middle of the road horror movies, then this will be worth your while. It kept me watching so I will give it a 6/10.