Opening sequence: young woman wakes up in the back of a pickup, wearing just bra and panties. She jumps out and runs. The man driving the truck stops, runs after her with a shovel. He knocks her out, carries her back, throws her into the back seat. A local looks on, says nothing, seems unperturbed by it.Three young men (Will, James, Kyle) and two young women (Jenna, Brooke) go for a trip to the sticks to interview an author of a book about a serial killer in Madison County. The author has no phone or computer; hence letters and the current interview.About 24 minutes in, the group reaches Madison County and stops for lunch. They ask about the book, Devil in the Woods, the book's author David Randall, and the main character in the book, Damian Ewell. They eventually get the author's address and go there.They find a nice house on private property, but no one answers the door.Kyle does some more digging for information, while the other four hang out at the address they were given. Kyle looks over a cemetery (looking for headstones), then areas nearby. He sees two girls topless in a stream, and tries to start a conversation. The villain comes up behind him, the girls see him, Kyle turns, and gets stabbed to death. The girls do not react at all even though there is a freshly dead human body in the stream with them. This is like the opening sequence: the lack of affect at outrageous events.The foursome explore near the house. Will and Brooke get separated from James and Jenna. Further James and Jenna get separated. Clever. Will buys his real estate while relieving himself. Brooke sees the body of her boyfriend and runs.Jenna and Brooke find each other. James talks to Erma at the diner again. Erma lets him know his time on earth is limited. The killer goes after the young women first. Jenna runs decoy for Brooke, who neither runs away nor helps her friend. The killer does Jenna in with an ax.James is captured along with a father (David Randall, from an earlier scene) and daughter (the young woman from the first sequence). James and the daughter escape, but the David does not. Brooke makes it back to the diner, which is now deserted. Erma claims she has not seen any of Brooke's friends, then offers to drive Brooke to a doctor. Then Erma (Damian's mother) knifes her to death.----Scores----Cinematography: 8/10 Jumpy camera work for perhaps four minutes, but usually quite good.Sound: 6/10 High differences in sound levels. Poor choices of incidental music. Accents? Actors sound like Los Angeles television most of the time. Conversational sound levels were consistently clear.Acting: 6/10 I've seen much worse.Screenplay: 5/10 This was pretty thin. Perhaps the kids might have set a date and a time and a place to meet the author first? That's too much to ask, I guess. The lack of affect by the locals could have used better exposition. Of course, this helps the "by the time you figure it out, it's too late" feeling of helplessness.

To be honest this film is pretty bad..... I paid £8 in Tesco and will definitely say it is not worth that price so Tesco you need to review your price on this. at least I can say I have watched it...... but what down turn for the ending didn't expect that at all......I would say don't buy this film but if you see it on your mates shelf then by all means waste an hour and a half of your life :) the film.reminds me.of.The wrong turn and house of wax. the story line is pretty similar. seems to me the film is slightly low budget too. If the film had pretty good ending then I might of rated it a little higher than a 3. An ending where it shows the survivors returning with help maybe the police from another county or maybe the Army or something.

Wow lots of horrible reviews for this one so I had to weight in on it as the defendant. First of all backwoods and films about exorcism really have no chance to be great with those two dark ominous clouds hanging over their respectable heads in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist. You make a backwoods film like TCM and people say you ripped it off . You make one completely different than TCM and people complain. I feel Madison County was a great little addition to our backwoods sub-genre. Come on people what makes these films good is the usual formula. Kids meet.....kids stop at creepy gas station......kids meet creepy locals.......kids are warned to stay out of the woods......kids don't listen......mayhem ensues.... Simple as that and if the acting is descent you will have a good little picture. Now Madison County is no masterpiece but it does have a great looking villain that is creepy. The gore is mostly left to the imagination...Hello original TCM and it is tightly packed into 80 or so minutes so it doesn't overstay its welcome. Please if you haven't seen this, ignore the horrible reviews crack open a beer or cider sit back and enjoy......and remember this is a step son to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and not the real deal. I'm out....................

Just as the market was glutted with slasher films during the initial wave of the sub genre in the early 1980s, now we're being inundated with many modern homages made by people who are big fans of those films. Unfortunately, with some of these films we're not getting anything we haven't seen many times before. And "Madison County" is one of those films. It's underwhelming, even boring, with fairly likable but extremely unmemorable characters, a sorry screenplay, and, worst of all, unimaginative set pieces. The story has a young man named James (Colley Bailey) working on a thesis and travelling to redneck country to interview an author with whom he's been in contact. The author had written a true crime book about murders in his neck of the woods, and, what do you know, the killer is still alive and well and intending to do some serious damage. About the only good thing I can say is that Robert Halls' Almost Human company does well with the gore; very undemanding fans of this sort of thing will enjoy the brutality. The pig mask that our killer Damien (Nick Principe) wears is also good for a mild chuckle. Writer / director Eric England spends quite a bit of time establishing situation and character, which is fine and good, except that the action, when it comes, isn't worth that much set-up. This thing only runs 82 minutes, and in all honesty it might have worked better in an even shorter format. The acting is not so hot from all concerned, although to be fair they don't have particularly good dialogue to recite. The girls are attractive, and it might have helped if they'd shown a bit more skin. All things considered, I could only recommend this if you just CAN'T get enough of rural horror. It's poor stuff, all the way until its unsatisfactory ending. Four out of 10.