One thing a horror film should never do is take the easy way out. “The Dead Link” breaks that rule. One thing a horror film should do is provide some scares. Another rule that is broken. The fact of the matter is, this film does a lot of nothing, but at least it has some heart and an slightly interesting idea behind it.
Two brothers (Ben Juhl and Jose Rosete) and the mandatory female sidekicks (Maya Salibi and Sarah Seider) go off into the Arizona desert to find some hidden gold. What they discover, however, is a mummified body that possesses them and causes them to attack each other at inopportune moments. Think of “The Evil Dead” in the sand.
This is a movie that was shot with very little money, which excuses the poor special effects (though the body at the center of the film does look pretty good), but doesn’t explain the fairly senseless plot. I suppose you can ignore the inadequacies of the story once you find out what is really going on. On second thought, maybe not. The story is just too weak to draw audiences in, and it never really delivers any solid jolts despite really trying.
For all its flaws, and there are many, “The Dead Link” makes an effort to take itself seriously, something that other genre movies can learn from. That just isn’t enough though, making this a movie to be avoided by all but the most die-hard horror fanatics.
