Since watching Mickey Keating’s Carnage Park I’ve been going back and forth on how I ultimately feel about it. I like it, there’s no question about that, but I really wanted to love it. The crime-thriller gets a lot right as it throws a loving nod to the exploitation cinema of the 70’s, but ends up just missing the mark a few times which results in a good, but not great movie.

The film opens after what should have been the perfect heist goes terribly wrong. Scorpion Joe (James Landry Hebert) is speeding down a highway with police pursuit close behind as his partner Lenny (Michael Villar) screams out in pain from the backseat as the result of a gunshot wound to the gut. The story then plays back the earlier events so we can see what exactly happened. The duo attempted to rob a small farmer’s bank when things didn’t go exactly as planned. They escaped with a hostage but Lenny took a lethal shot. Jumping back to the current time Joe desperately pleads with Lenny to hold on but ultimately the wound becomes too much and he dies.

Joe is eventually able to shake the cops by turning off the highway and onto a dirt road. He pulls over and pops the truck to get his hostage, Vivian (Ashley Bell). He forces Vivian to help him remove Lenny’s body and then the two head off on the road again, allegedly heading for Mexico. As Joe continues to head for the border Vivian pleads with him to let her go. Suddenly an unknown shooter takes out one of the car’s tires causing them to lose control and come to a stop just off the road. Joe gets out of the vehicle and is pretty quickly shot dead.

The shooter is revealed to be Wyatt Moss (Pat Healy) and unfortunately for Joe he drove onto Wyatt’s land and well, Wyatt doesn’t take kindly to strangers. Wyatt makes it very clear to Vivian that he had every right to shoot Joe because he was trespassing. He then drugs Vivian, knocking her out, despite her pleas to be let go.

When Vivian awakes she finds herself handcuffed to Joe’s dead body. She manages to drag herself and the body out of the car and eventually is able to use a rock to break free of the handcuffs. Vivian frantically runs through the desert in search of safety. She hears a PA system and runs towards it but once she reaches it Wyatt begins to shoot at her from off in the distance. Turns out that Wyatt uses his property as one giant hunting playground and Vivian is now the hunted.

Carnage Park is a fun, thrilling ride. Keating succeeds greatly in building the suspense as the cat-and-mouse game between Wyatt and Vivian plays out. The film has a tight 90-minute runtime and you’re kept on pins and needles throughout. Healy helps with this a great deal as he’s a wonderful villain. As an actor he continues to impress showcasing wide range that is very comparable to someone like Steve Buscemi.

My only real issue with Carnage Park is that after the suspenseful build up it just sort of ends. I had my eyes set on an explosive finale and you don’t really get that here. It’s not a bad ending by any means and it works, but it’s a bit anti-climatic when compared to the rest of the film. I wanted Carnage Park to go out firing all cylinders and instead it just stops. This isn’t enough to prevent me from liking the film, but I do think it prevents it from being great.

The Blu-ray is a pretty standard IFC Midnight-Scream Factory collaboration. The film looks great, as one should expect with a newer movie, but the release is bare bones. It would have been cool to have some sort of special feature, either a commentary or maybe some interviews with Keating, Healy, etc. It seems like they would have been down for something like that so not sure why there’s no bonus content here.

Carnage Park isn’t the homerun I was hoping for but it’s a loving tribute to 70’s grindhouse flicks that I can absolutely appreciate. The Blu-ray, despite it’s lack of special features, is a worthy pickup for exploitation fans.

Oh and there’s a Larry Fessenden cameo. That’s always worth extra points.

Carnage Park is now available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.