Terror on the Prairie is a film made by The Daily Wire and it was kind of a response to wokeness in Hollywood films. Putting Gina Carano in the lead role was the way that the conservative group was giving the middle finger to Disney for firing her from a Star Wars series because of her conservative views.
The Daily Wire I think is making some money by having woke-free content on whatever their streaming service is and I guess it is doing pretty well because they are offering millions of dollar contracts to a lot of people out there like Jordan Peterson and recently with Stephen Crowder. I haven't seen any of it and this was my first attempt at viewing any of their programming.
While I wasn't expecting it to be extremely top drawer, I was hoping it wouldn't be terrible and sorry conservative folk out there but this movie is straight up awful.
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The opening sequence where a man is being chased by 4 men on horseback only to be brutally beaten and then scalped while still alive gives you the incorrect impression that this film is going to be edgy and perhaps pretty shocking. Unfortunately that is not what happens at all.
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They do a pretty decent job of showing how extremely difficult life must have been for the settlers all those years ago but unfortunately when the "terror" part of this prairie movie starts to happen this is when things really fall apart.
For one thing, nobody can aim worth a damn and a lot of this makes no sense because they are in such close proximity to one another during the shootouts. "Hattie" (Carano) is firing a shotgun out a window at people that are just 10 feet away or so and misses by miles. I think she only connects with one shot and this is, ironically, done using someone else's pistol through a door that apparently bullets can only travel outward through.
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During this extremely long and drawn out shootout, she is always outnumbered 4 to 1 by men who are meant to be much more experienced in firing weapons than she is. Yet despite having many opportunities to do so in a practical sense, none of them are able to get near a window and hit her from the other side. We also need to keep in mind that her opponents are carrying revolvers and repeater rifles and she is using a double-barrel shotgun almost exclusively. All that anyone would have to do is wait for her to reload and the entire "terror" would be over.
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Another part of this film that was frustrating to see in front of you was that while Gina has some acting chops, almost everyone else in the film is abysmal. Whoever the child actor that is playing her older son is, is just hilariously bad at acting and Cowboy Cerrone is really awful as well. He isn't even in very much of the film and is wonderfully absent during almost all of the shootout.
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I think this was Cerrone's first acting gig post MMA and I gotta be honest with ya, it kind of shows.
I suppose you could say that I appreciate a gory western as much as the next guy but I really can't stand it when any film has completely impractical things going on in it such as 4 ex military men being unable to get control of a single woman in a house that has windows on 3 sides.
I wanted to like this because I too want to give the finger to Hollywood and Disney, but if this is the best they can do I'm afraid that Hollywood will probably win this showdown.
It enjoys a decent rating on IMDB but I think this is just a lot of people that gave it 10 out of 10 for real-life political reasons rather than actually judging the film on its own merits.