A family on their way to their daughter's softball camp visits a long-forgotten roadside attraction of oddities deep in the Florida swamps. This carnival of attractions is attractive to the father as he is fixing to make a coffee-table book of various country sideshows. Among the old rustic sideshow museum attractions they find an inbred family of murderous mutants who have terrifying plans for their daughters.
Side Sho threatens to become something a little different at times. Unfortunately, it is not long before it falls back into the psychotic backwoods hillbilly formula seen all too often in horror films. What's worse, the budgetary constraints (The film had a budget of only $500,000) inevitably leave it shorted in important areas in a horror film like this. One example would be gore as although the film does have a few nice scenes of realistic gore, other times the blood is either obviously fake-looking or they just cut away. Given that Side Sho is certainly not trying for a moody psychological tone, the failure to show what the viewer most certainly wants to see is an almost unforgivable sin.
As for the few moments when the film threatens to give the viewer something a little different, they too disappoint. Beware, spoilers lie ahead. Skip to the next paragraph to remain spoiler-free. So the dad and brother have seemingly battled and killed all of the psychotic hillbillies, rescued their significant others, and headed back to the car. They start it up and begin driving away. One wonders what will happen next, refreshed that they seem to be heading in a different direction. Instead, the car quickly stalls and they become stuck at the Side Show once again. Even worse, the women get kidnapped again and the film proceeds to basically replay the first half over again, same beats and all. This is basically the same 45-minute film done twice over! And the first 45-minutes aren't that good to begin with. There is nary any tension to be had, the music overpowers the dialogue all too often, and the said music is an annoying music of ambient sounds and something akin to but not quite as good as heavy metal.
As for the acting, it too is lacking. The villains don't really come across as all that villainous. These inbreds have nothing on the "Wrong Turn" and "The Hills Have Eyes" mutants. While those were especially vicious killers that demanded to be feared, these are wimps more content to cackle like idiots than actually do any real harm unless provoked. The acting on the family side isn't much better as the women scream constantly instead of doing anything to fight back and the men are almost as wimpy as the mutants they're fighting. The son is actually the best character as he is the only one who comes close to developing a personality and, unlike the others, fights back with a vengeance, especially for being just a kid.
This is one Side Sho not worth visiting.
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