Deliverance is a far creepier 'yuppie out of water' story

Rating: Null/10 (22 October 1999)

While I do admire the marketing side of this film, and to some extent, the actors who for the most part made us believe they weren't being actors, this movie fell far from the hype tree for me. It's slightly creepy, quirky and fun, but certainly not enough of any one of those to warrant the kind of mega-hype and press coverage it received.
There was simply too much build-up and not enough payoff in the story(and not in the traditional Hollywood sense) for an 87 minute long movie. While it is refreshing to see a horror movie that's more about true fear than gore, violence and sex, it's been done before, and much, MUCH better. Granted, the film 'Deliverance' did provide it's share of gore and sex (both to INCREDIBLY disturbing effect), it's shear 'it could happen to me' factor was far higher and it stuck with me a lot longer than this matinee, popcorn-movie version did.
I applaud the ability to market such a low-end product as edgy and surreal, but seems more work could have been done to flush it out into a truly terrifying tale. The fact that the creators are now getting TV deals, etc, is a sad state of people confusing salesmanship with true creativity and talent. (Though who knows, maybe this was just a warm-up to greater things, who am I to judge).