"Munger Road" doesn't break much new ground, but it covers the old ground nicely. Two St. Charles students (Trevor Morgan and Hallock Beals) get a video camera so they can go out with their dates (Brooke Peoples and Lauren Storm), to the tracks on Munger Road to check for supernatural activity. The car engine mysteriously dies and the four kids are marooned in the middle of nowhere.
From John Carpenter's "Halloween," director/writer Nick Smith appropriates the escaped serial killer plot, plus pays homage to the opening-scene tracking shot by having a cop investigate a dark house through a point-of-view camera.
Smith also lifts the swinging ceiling lamp effect from Hitchcock's "Psycho" and briefly the making-a-documentary premise from "The Blair Witch Project" which it stole from "Cannibal Holocaust."
So, don't go to see "Munger Road" for originality.
Go to witness how Smith and his young conspirators (including Polish composer Wojciech Golczewski with his edgy, alarming score) transform the sleepy little community of St. Charles into the scariest Illinois town since Michael Myers roamed fictional Haddonfield.
