THE POISONING is an indie thriller about a crazed hitchhiker. That plot has been done to death by Hollywood throughout the decades, with such minor gems as THE HITCHER and THE HITCH-HIKER doing their very best to unnerve viewers, but this indie version is entirely unremarkable. The problem is that the plot is very familiar and the execution is bog-standard, the film lacking in the kind of intrigue and excitement it needs to grip the viewer. The whole thing is just too low budget to do the premise justice.

**This review contains spoilers!** "The Poisoning"? Yeah...the poisoning of good cinema, is more like it. The synopsis sounded promising enough, it's why I watched every painful minute of it, in the vain hopes that it would get better. Needless to say, it didn't.First of all, this movie is PAINFULLY slow. The first hour or more reminded me of 'The Blair Witch Project', except this takes place on the highway/hotel rooms/wherever they happened to be at the time. All the three guys did was bicker, p*ss, and moan, moan, bicker, and p*ss, p*ss, moan, and bicker. And when the guys finally ran across the hitchhiker, he had a grand total of about 10 minutes of screen time. Yup.Now, I don't need everything spoon-fed to me, but at least give me some scraps, for Christ sake! This goes out to whoever wrote the 'script' for this: I am not a freaking mind reader, OK? Neither are any of the other viewers, I'll wager. At least give us SOMETHING that we can kinda/sorta/maybe/probably/perhaps piece together, fill in the blanks ourselves, to at least...at least take a good GUESS at what was going on! Absolutely NOTHING was explained in this movie. Zip. Zilch. Nada. None. Was the hitchhiker The Devil or a demon? Why (if it was, indeed, him) did he drive just the main protagonist crazy? For what reason, other than the fact he initially refused to pick him up from the side of the road? And, given what happened later, who could blame him? The dude was a hundred different kinds of creepy.Then, are you ready for it, be prepared for shaky, SHAKY camera-work during chase sequences, you know, the kind that will make you feel dizzy and sick to your stomach? Audiences can't get enough of that, right? Right! Things happening at night that you have absolutely NO IDEA what is going on, because it looks like the scenes were shot by the lighting from a Zippo cigarette lighter. Who was the mysterious woman at the gas station that the main character attacked? And why? As I already mentioned, nothing is ever explained, it's just another example of extremely lazy writing. The movie climaxes with 'driven crazy for no apparent reason and I can't even figure out how the bad guy did it' dude chasing his last friend into the desert, where he then murders the crap out of him. Then...the credits roll.Don't waste your time like I did.

The Poisoning is an independent movie that does what Hollywood is doing a lot less of these days and that is telling a great story. If your looking for gore and effects this movie isn't for you. The Poisoning keeps you interested though the art of storytelling and building up suspense. You get to invest in the characters as the tension builds up throughout the plot. You remain interested throughout the film and there is enough tension and story built around the three friends.Then here comes your friendly twisted well played hitchhiker. All the actors did a great job and the characters are familiar as you probably have "that guy" within your circle of friends. drop the few buck over at Vimeo, you wont be disappointed