Summer’s Moon is a Canadian psychological thriller that goes to prove just how dangerous hitchhiking can be. When Summer (Ashley Greene) heads out on the road to find her biological father, she gets into a spot of trouble with the police and is taken in by Tom (Peter Mooney).
Unfortunately, one night in the company of a complete stranger causes a bit of trouble for Summer when Tom and his mother refuse to let her leave. Instead she gets to spend some time in their human garden basement.
Summer’s Moon is different to other thrillers where young girls get kidnapped. Typically once the girl is abducted, it isn’t long before she is murdered. In this case it is not just some psychopathic or deranged mad man taking girls for his own pleasure. It is a mentally unstable man that believes he is growing angels in his basement garden, represented by the young women in his life being tied to flower beds and brainwashed.
That is until Tom’s father returns home and she realises that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. This is no ordinary family; they may not be as vicious as the killer families in Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the Devil’s Rejects but they are not far of from it and just as mentally unstable.
There are many unexpected twists to this tale that add a little more to an already sadistic narrative; incestuous relationships, murder running in the family like brown eyes or blond hair and killing your present family to be able to start afresh. The twists that occur will also have you looking at characters in a whole new light. Those that seem innocent enough at the start will gradually have you despising them and yet feeling for them in other ways as the story develops.
The only downside to Summer’s Moon was the lack of an appropriate ending. The film spends the better part of an hour building a relationship between Summer and her kidnappers, only to introduce the “daddy” figure and have everything thrown off scale when he acts as the man of the house and ultimately fails in his endeavour. Other than this disappointing ending, Summer’s Moon will twist you mind like never before.