Main cast: Kayla Adams (Sarah), Matthew Holcomb (Payson), Bryan David Roberts (Wade), Chloe Berman (Lisa), Brad Worch II (Greg), Eric Alperin (Evan), Rob Mars (Andy), Schno Mozingo (Kris), Cody Renee Cameron (Ingrid), Courtney Munch (Dianne), Quinn Early (McClane), Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld (Bill), Jonathan Wong (Chad), and Christiaan Rendle (Jerry)
Directors: Chris Johnston and Andy Malchiodi
In a time when every freaking horror show on streaming is about a family moving into some haunted or demon-y house only for the daughter to do weird things with the woo-woo, Hex seems like a refreshing change from the stale formula.
After all, it’s about a cursed skydiving maneuver called, what else, the Hex.
Oh, the tropes are there. Sarah, our obvious final girl because she has far more minimal character development than the other characters here, has a father that fell to his death while doing the Hex with some friends.
Of course, her mother never tells her about this until after Sarah has done it herself, because it’s more fun that way.
After Sarah and the members of her skydiving club have succeeded in pulling off the Hex midair, one of them simply vanishes from sight. That’s right, he just goes poof like a cheap special effect. This is soon followed by the others meeting strange deaths one by one. Can Sarah find a way to stop this before the curse gets to her?
Despite the premise, this movie isn’t very Final Destination-ish, as the kills are neither particularly inventive nor memorable. These people get killed off apparently in random and unrelated ways, and I’d have forgotten that the “curse”, whatever it is, is supposed to be behind all this were not for the movie reminding me often of its existence.
For a long time, this movie is more of some psychoanalysis of Sarah, which is unfortunate because her character is actually a staple horror movie cliché with nothing memorable or inventive about her. She is not a good character to anchor the story around, as I’ve come across characters similar to her many times before and I’m bored as a result.
Even the twist, when it is revealed, isn’t anything inventive or memorable.
Actually, that’s the movie in a nutshell: it is nothing memorable because it seems to be a cobbling together of all kinds of tropes that have been done so much better in other movies.
For a low budget flick, it boasts better acting than most of its kind, but on the whole, it’s a snooze. Shame really, as the concept of a skydiving curse can be pretty intriguing.
