Overall:
D-
Acting: D+
Writing: D
Story: D
Technical
aspects: D
Effects: F
Directed by:
Morgan Hampton
Starring:
Wayne Casey
AnnieScott Rogers
Paul Schilens
Lisa Wharton
Nate Duncan
The
basic plot of this one is that an innocent guy named Scott (Wayne Casey) is
just out for a jog, when he’s suddenly kidnapped by the couple Razor (Paul
Schilens) and Julie (Lisa Wharton.) Their motives for this are never really
explained… they’re both wanted by the police, but they’re driving around
running over people and animals as a game, and for some reason they grab Scott
and take him with.
They
aim to run over a little girl, and Scott attempts to get control of the car,
and they end up hitting an old man. The man’s family members attack the three,
capturing them and taking them to see “Red.” The three are kept in a shed,
where they’re tormented in various ways (Razor has a finger cut off, Julie is
forced to stand naked on their dinner table, Scott gets stabbed…) And Red
(AnnieScott Rogers,) the apparent matriarch of the group insists that she’ll
slowly let each of them go over the next few weeks, so her family will think
they’ve been justly taken care of.
Blah
blah, stuff happens, Julie and Razor are supposedly let go, Scott is allowed to
come live in the house rather than the shed, and he’s taken to a big party
they’re putting on. As he’s eating, he finds Razor’s ring (clever title!) in
his food, and he realizes that OMG THEY’VE BEEN EATING PEOPLE. AND HE’S NEXT.
Either a Soylent Green or a Troll 2 joke would be appropriate here.
Spoilers!
He escapes, there’s the fakest explosion ever, and he returns to society. But
then he realizes that he’s now addicted to eating human flesh! He then buys the
land the cannibals were living on, and is apparently planning to eat his
girlfriend? Or something. (End spoilers.)
Anyway,
not a good film. The characterization was very inconsistent – Razor and Julie
plan to pin the death of the old man on Scott, Scott plans to tell the truth
about his non-involvement, so they’re fighting with each other most of the
time. But then suddenly they’ll be acting like great friends, trying to work
together, or just talking to each other. And what’s ostensibly a couple days
later (though we’re told that it’s been weeks, sometimes; there’s no real sense
of time passing) Razor and Scott sit talking about how wonderful the food is,
and how great things are. (It’s funny because they’re EATING JULIE, GET IT?)
The
acting is pretty poor, though not the worst out there. Some is likely more
budget than anything, but in a couple scenes it appears an actor screws up a
line and then just has to roll with it. None of the characters strike me as
very believable in their roles, though. The one exception is probably
AnnieScott Rogers as Red, as she’s pretty entertaining. She falls into the
“watch my extreme mood shifts to show I’m evil” acting camp, and could be
considered the low-budget Kathy Bates-as-Annie Wilkes, but she’s pretty good as
both a violent psychopath and as the kindly grandmother-type.
The
sound direction was all right, but the filming was not. It appears to be done
almost exclusively with a handheld camera, sometimes going out of focus, always
unsteady, using clumsy zooms to focus on things. Scenes are terribly edited
together, in some cases making it painfully clear that the two people or events that are
being cut between aren’t happening even remotely near each other.
The
effects are laughable. Most of the gory scenes aren’t shown, probably for the
better, because the blood effects are pretty sub-standard. And the explosion at
the end… we both literally started laughing at how silly it looked.
This
movie definitely felt like a waste of time. But it gets a D simply because my
bar for an F has been set so incredibly low.
(Happy October, everyone!)
(Happy October, everyone!)
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