On a quiet country road somewhere in rural Delaware, a quartet of friends speed towards a party, not being aware that their reckless actions will ultimately lead to their demise. It’s a premise that could be plucked from just about any slasher horror film made in the past thirty years, but in this instance, it refers to The Roost, the directorial debut of Ti West who tells the story of a group of young people who inadvertently find themselves pursued by a rogue’s gallery of villainous creatures, all of which are intent on ending their lives for reasons that are never made quite clear. West has earned a bit of acclaim in the past few years as a result of audiences discovering his slasher trilogy (consisting of X, Pearl and Maxine), which has prompted a reassessment of his earlier work, particularly the films he made towards the start of his career when he was a young and rambunctious filmmaker with bold ideas and a drive to leave an impression in the industry. Unfortunately, unlike some of his peers, West did not have the benefit of an exceptionally strong debut, as The Roost is a pretty dismal film and one that isn’t even salvageable in the sense of being given the benefit of the doubt as a debut. Good ideas are wasted and West struggles to do anything even marginally entertaining and interesting, ultimately leading to a very weak film that doesn’t amount to much other than being the work that kickstarted an unorthodox career in which he attempted to redefine the genre, but ultimately fell victim to its many tropes.

When crafting a debut, it can be expected that a filmmaker may not be entirely in command of every tool to which they have access, and it’s understandable to give them some degree of leniency to work through their artistic curiosities. The results are often going to be worthwhile, even if the work may be slightly rough around the edges. Unfortunately, West fails to do something that just about every young filmmaker should make a priority – establish precisely what he wants his film to be, or at least have some degree of consistency in his vision. This is the foundation from which the entire film can be constructed and where its ideas can take shape – and it is where West falters, with even the conceptual elements of The Roost being an absolute misfire. In theory, there is potential here – slasher horrors are always entertaining, and to add in some sense of social satire in the form of the impetus behind these attacks does prove that he did possess some semblance of a vision, but it ultimately proved to be almost inconsequential when what he was dealing with was a much more limited, one-dimensional set of themes that don’t come together in any coherent way, and eventually begin to feel rehashed from the hundreds of similarly-themed horror films made over the years, and which at least carried a consistency, rather than constantly struggling to define themselves as anything more than what we see on the surface.

Some have defended The Roost as being a throwback to the low-budget horror films of the 1970s, where shoestring resources were stretched further than anyone thought possible to tell engaging and terrifying stories that kept audiences intrigued and entertained. There is a trend where younger filmmakers are so reverent to a particular genre or film movement, that they over-extend themselves to the point where it feels less like a homage or tribute, and more like a fervent series of obsessions cobbled together and labelled a film, which is the precise problem with The Roost, which desperately wants to be seen as a throwback to the nasty, cutthroat slasher films of previous decades, but lacks even the most fundamental nuances to make it effective. The low-budget aesthetic was en vogue for a while, with the gritty and raw approach having a lot of appeal amongst those who were growing weary of the industry’s dependency on polished, nuanced approaches to horror – but seeing a film like this, we begin to appreciate those who put in some effort, since The Roost is genuinely quite badly made, and not intentionally. The structure is inconsistent down to the smallest detail, the plot meanders to and fro in a way that is quite jarring, and the handheld camera footage gives the aura of being produced by a complete amateur who was attempting to make an improvised horror film rather than providing any kind of structure. The actors are mostly non-professionals (except Tom Noonan, who somehow managed to be coerced into starring in the film’s introduction), and are only as good as the material, which is too weak to even vaguely register in any significant way.

I would love to say that West is a filmmaker whose work is an acquired taste and intentionally not appealing to wider audiences, but this ultimately proves to be far too generous. I’m hesitant to call anyone a bad filmmaker, and his work has yielded a degree of popularity in recent years, but there is simply something that doesn’t quite make sense with the work that he has done over time, almost as if his films are halfway to a good idea, but squander it entirely through poor execution and heavy-handed techniques, none of which really should come as a surprise. The Roost is not a very good film, and it is not difficult to see why it didn’t become a sensation like other independent horror films that were made at the time. There is very little that can be redeemed as far as this film is concerned – its attempts at humour fall flat, its horror is very tacky (even for an independent film), and the scares barely register. However, it’s the lack of cohesion that feels most unfortunate, since there is very little holding this film together, and it often comes across as a meandering mess, just offering nothing we haven’t seen before, and doing the bare minimum as far as narrative construction goes. Dull as they come and twice as frustrating, The Roost doesn’t even attempt to leave much of an impression. Thankfully, West did go on to make slightly better films, so this was at least a learning experience, but it’s unfortunate that this was the film that kicked off his career, which has only gone upwards from when this bizarre work made its first appearance.