What a Fun Night!!!
From Big Luke Walker's Facebook page
in regards to the "Halloween at Halls" Test Screening:
I'm sure bigger things have happened in my life. Positive of it. I cant think of one of them right now. We made a movie. We sat in a theater and watched it. 60 people(max capacity because of covid)... well, they... laughed. A lot. And when "things got real" you could feel it in the room. I was worried people wouldn't "get it". They got it. In my decades of being a performer, I am always suspicious of the verbal review "that was great". The verbal review i got repeatedly was, "I was entertained the whole movie". That is what I needed to hear. Thats what we set out to do. Tell a compelling, funny, and original story with heart, soul, and keep it constantly moving. "I was entertained" is the exact response to all of that. I cant shake the memories of last night. People showed up that I didn't expect. People I did expect warmed my heart. This movie will not end here. Our future is now set to make more movies. Distributors will get this to more eyes. I said yesterday this is a "make it or break it" moment for us and it was. To take a line from a music video we made for Fish Fisher
... "I think we're gonna make it!!!!!"
"The Hike" Review by Nerdy Laser Podcast's Matt Henry
The Hike was fantastic and the whole crew should be proud of it! Great Comedy/Action/Horror Film. With shades of the Evil Dead and Deliverance sprinkled in with a little bit of They Live and Clerks this local gem hits the funny bone, and a whole lot of other bones also. The Chemistry with the two leads ( Vinnie Vineyard & Kandi Thompson ) completely caught me off guard, I got lost in the movie and did not realize that this was the same Vinnie I knew, it completely suspended my disbelief. It was like meeting a old friend for the first time.
Kandi twisted your expectations of what a leading lady is. This is not your typical damsel in distress female character. She is part of the story in multiple ways, and most of the time portrays a stronger version of a female character in a horror film.
Luke Was intelligently shot to look like even more of a Giant then he was. However, He was not portrayed as a typical lumbering strong man with a axe to grind. Instead what we got was a more intelligent portrayal of that kind of character. I don’t want to give too much away, but plot wise his reasoning and motivation was my favorite twist in this little genre mash up.Travis surprised me the most, multiple scenes that he delivery knocked me for a loop. Another instance where I forgot that this was the Travis that I’ve known and grown up with, instead he became this character in this movie.
The beauty of this was the comedy. The first 30 minutes of this movie ( And little moments sprinkled throughout ) Were legitimately laugh out loud funny. This makes all the characters so relatable and likable. I truly underestimated the talent that this little click of friends has. You guys keep doing what your doing, because there’s an audience out there waiting to discover it.
Not a lot of gore, but when we did see it it was bursting with bright reds That stood out amongst the drained color pallet of the film. It mirrors the drained color palette of the National park under the canopy of trees. Never has such a large space felt so claustrophobic and Drury. This is partly due to the handheld nature of the film but also by design.
-Matt Henry
(10/16/2020)
