[reviewed on IMDB] Summary: Pointless, gratuitous scenes of “plot porn” totally ruin 90 good minutes of people being murdered.
This movie is well-produced, well acted, extremely realistic in its gore and violence. Unfortunately, I have to give it only one star because about for almost whole 10 minutes at the beginning, and again near the end of the movie, they stop showing people getting murdered, to waste time bogging it down with some throwaway backstory or reason for the murders, or something, completely from out of left field. I’m not sure… it was people talking, not characters getting stabbed in the eye or having a blender forced down onto the top of their head, so I couldn’t sustain any attention to it.
In what universe are moviegoers actually entertained by a murderer SAYING WHY they kill people? Are there really people out there who sit and watch scenes of people talking, not killing anyone or being murdered at all, and find that entertaining? I highly doubt it.
It’s a shame. This film’s director, and writer if there was one, clearly could have had a future, and probably a great franchise opportunity with this film—if they hadn’t sold out and inserted scenes for the sole purpose of pandering to depraved people who only go to movies for “plot” or “dialogue”. I sense the marketing department or some other beancounters urging the filmmakers to go back and add these scenes after the film had already wrapped, just to throw in something to please the lowest-common-denominator idiots who can’t even be happy with a 95 minutes collection of murder scenes.
Unfortunately, these pointless, gratuitous non-violent acts completely break the otherwise uninterrupted fever pitch of nonstop brutality, and what would have been a top notch, totally solid 95 minutes of human deaths and is stymied by the crassly commercial attempt to suggest “plot” or “dialogue”.
This weird, boring non-violence provides an especially disappointing anti-climax when, unbelievably, it occurs AGAIN time near the end for some reason. Until that point it’s been just killing, killing, killing, one murder scene after another for long enough that you can actually start to forget about the cinematically bankrupt initial minutes of non-murder, and begin to enjoy the movie, when, boom, then it happens AGAIN.
One early scene of people not getting murdered might have been forgivable. A second one, right near what should have been the climax of the film, just leaves the viewer wondering what the director was thinking that he allowed such ham-fisted, totally gratuitous irrelevancies into his film—not just once but TWICE.
At least these pointless minutes of “plot porn” are prevented from completely ruining the end of the film, by being suddenly followed in the final minutes with a few more gory, explicit murders (and even the last-minute introduction of a totally new character for the sole purpose of squeezing in just one more axe splitting one more head open before the credits roll!) I have to imagine after being forced to sully their film with stupid scenes of people talking to each other, they probably snuck back in to the studio late at night and added those final few minutes on the sly, without the knowledge of the marketing department or whoever demanded they ruin the movie. Good for them for sneaking that in, that last-ditch attempt at quality filmmaking is the only reason I can honestly give the film its 1 star.
I’m glad the production team came to their senses and at least respected the audience enough to end it so well, sparing us from having the lamentable spectacle of characters SAYING THINGS—not even killing or dying while they say them; just SAYING things!—stuck lingering in our head as they exit the theater.
I don’t understand what would even give someone the idea to put something like that in a movie, or what kind of sellout director would allow it. This obvious mercenary ploy to cash in by appealing to the lowest common denominator, even for just a few minutes near the beginning and end, completely ruins what would have been the greatest movie since the history of cinema began, back in 1978 with “Last House On The Left”. It’s sad, tragic really, how close this film came, and how badly it failed. Ah, to dream, of what could have been, and of murders.