Ever since the original stories of Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, it feels like there’s been a rush to turn every childhood memory into a quick buck, especially in the horror genre. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was quickly followed by a sequel and a spiritual successor of sorts in The Mouse Trap, which capitalizes on the entry of the “Steamboat Willie” version of Mickey Mouse into the public domain. At first glance, Organ Trail may seem to be just another piece of nostalgia-bait horror, but there’s more to this horror western than meets the eye.
It isn’t beholden to the classic computer game The Oregon Trail in the slightest; instead, it’s a brutal revenge tale that just so happens to take place around covered wagons and the western wilderness of the 1800s. Unlike other stories of the historic Oregon Trail that focus on the treacherous weather or even the desperate measures of the starving Donner Party, the horrors of Organ Trail are entirely inflicted by a group of heartless marauders along the trail who kidnap Zoé De Grand Maison. The violence is vicious, and the tension remains strong right up until the climax, even as De Grand Maison switches from prey to predator and back again throughout the movie.
Dysentery is the Least of Zoé De Grand Maison’s Problems in ‘Organ Trail’

Image via Paramount Pictures

Organ Trail starts off as if it were just another exploration of how the weather and terrain could quickly become deadly while traveling in the West in the 1800s. A family of four hurries to get on the trail before an early winter blows in, and they’re clearly worried about the journey. Their food supplies are low, as is their ammo for hunting, but the father (Mather Zickel) still agrees to take in a wounded woman he finds among the remains of another wagon’s massacre. His kindness is his downfall, unfortunately, and the family is beset by a ruthless group of bandits led by Logan (Sam Trammell). Abby (De Grand Maison) survives the attack but is kidnapped and taken back to their hideout in an abandoned town alongside the wounded woman, Cassidy (Olivia Grace Applegate). This is where the movie pivots from just another tale of wilderness into a terrifying fight for not just survival, but retribution.

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Organ Trail doesn’t ignore the common hazards of Old West living; the beginning of the movie is unrelenting in showing the damage done by arrows and knives, and the methods used to patch people up, like shoving moss into an open wound, are cringe-inducing. But all of that is a bluff of sorts, as the real focus of the movie is De Grand Maison’s character, Abby, escaping from Logan’s crew but determined to get her horse back. It might not sound worth risking her life again just for a horse, but for a young woman with no family or traveling companions, survival on the prairie without a horse would likely be impossible. But the roles of predator and prey never stop shifting, keeping the tension high as Abby is first chased down by her captors, then tracks them down herself to retrieve her horse, and finally has to face off against Rhys (Nicholas Logan), a psychopathic member of Logan’s gang who has a genetic inability to feel pain and takes pleasure in causing pain to others.
The Idea For ‘Organ Trail’ Came From a Typo

Viewers who want The Oregon Trail to remain a happy childhood memory and not be crowbarred into a schlocky horror movie can breathe a sigh of relief. Screenwriter Meg Turner didn’t set out to write a script based on the beloved video game – they started with just a riff on the title, which itself was the result of a typo while searching online for the actual game. In an interview with the Prince George Citizen, they explain that they weren’t focused on details from the game but just thought, “what if Quentin Tarantino wrote The Little House On the Prairie?” And Organ Trail delivers on the hyper-violence you’d expect from that description, showing everything from Thomas Lennon getting a hot coffee pot shoved against his face to a man being burned alive and surviving. Of course, Tarantino has done his own violent version of the Old West with The Hateful Eight, but it has more of a paranoid thriller vibe, whereas Organ Trail is closer to a classic revenge horror, so the latter avoids feeling derivative.
Organ Trail also has a unique take on its villains. Trammell’s Logan is vicious but presents himself as a kind of debonair rascal (who happens to like killing people and stealing their stuff). That’s not necessarily anything new, but the twist comes from the fact that he’s supplanted as the Big Bad by the much more unhinged and brutal Rhys. Unlike Jack Quaid’s character in the action-comedy Novocaine, Rhys doesn’t care to use his lack of pain perception to help those he cares about. He likely doesn’t care about anyone and his condition only serves to make him a nigh unstoppable force of malice; he can take beatings, bullets, and even flames all over his body without slowing down, and by the end of the movie, his body is a nightmare of raw, burned flesh from the various attempts to keep him from killing Abby and her new companions.
Rhys’ condition and his sadistic nature turn him from a run-of-the-mill murderer into something closer to an actual monster by the end of the film. It’s that extra element, plus the brutality of the rest of Logan’s gang, that pushes Organ Trail into something more terrifying than just a regular Old West thriller.

Organ Trail

Release Date

April 14, 2023

Director

Michael Patrick Jann

Writers

Meg Turner