In a nutshell, if you've seen five average, gory suspense movies before, you've seen this one. By the end, you won't care.
The movie has been described already in other posts, so I won't get into that. What I do want to stress are the horrible characters, and the buckets of clichés and plot devices.
The movie starts out like any typical hack'em up suspense flick with moody music, quick edits, and lots of in-your-face gore, some plot, and then some odd characters -- the cast of suspects. These suspects are all acting totally wrong given the situation, and that is why we suspect them. We never find out why they are acting weird except for the actual killer. One suspect goes on behaving suspiciously and letting the cops think what they will, and it's never explained why. Another obvious suspect is totally ignored by the cops, and is even left alone with the woman who knew all the slashed-up victims.
The police too, are stupid way beyond Keystone Cops. They follow leads into apartments, discover PIECES OF THE VICTIMS, and just hang around alone, poking through things without phoning for back-up, knowing the baddies could be back at any moment. This happens twice. Then, when attacked in a dark alley by the murderer in a car, while the murderer is threateningly -- but patiently -- gunning the engine in neutral apparently waiting for the cop to decide where to run, the cop runs straight for a fence, and the inevitable man-climbs-fence-while-chased-by-car scene, instead of calmly stepping back through the OPEN DOOR into the brick building he just came out of. He also neglects to take down the licence plate, or, apparently, to tell the rest of the police department to look for that car in the area. It shows up again under the APARTMENT BUILDING of the woman they're trying to protect.
And the pathetic attempt at pathos. There's a scene where one guy is crying -- and i'm not making this up -- while passionately squeezing a handful of semi-digested peanuts.
Nothing fits. There's no motive for the way the murderer is working. The police suddenly divine patterns of how the murderer tells the police who the next victim will be, and if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you know who's going to be marked for death next. The murderer gives away far too much information, as if wanting to be caught, but it doesn't play out that way at all.
Positives. The acting by the main female lead was decent. There was nothing she personally could do about the script or the director, or the other actors. There's lots of blood, and other than the rubber arms, all the gory props are at least reasonably believable.
The movie generally looked good. It was appealing, appropriate, and professionally done up in post production. The music was good, and I'd say some of it was a poor copy of the dramatic classical music in "Old Boy," but this movie was made first, so maybe it was the inspiring predecessor.
Anyway, best avoided.
The movie has been described already in other posts, so I won't get into that. What I do want to stress are the horrible characters, and the buckets of clichés and plot devices.
The movie starts out like any typical hack'em up suspense flick with moody music, quick edits, and lots of in-your-face gore, some plot, and then some odd characters -- the cast of suspects. These suspects are all acting totally wrong given the situation, and that is why we suspect them. We never find out why they are acting weird except for the actual killer. One suspect goes on behaving suspiciously and letting the cops think what they will, and it's never explained why. Another obvious suspect is totally ignored by the cops, and is even left alone with the woman who knew all the slashed-up victims.
The police too, are stupid way beyond Keystone Cops. They follow leads into apartments, discover PIECES OF THE VICTIMS, and just hang around alone, poking through things without phoning for back-up, knowing the baddies could be back at any moment. This happens twice. Then, when attacked in a dark alley by the murderer in a car, while the murderer is threateningly -- but patiently -- gunning the engine in neutral apparently waiting for the cop to decide where to run, the cop runs straight for a fence, and the inevitable man-climbs-fence-while-chased-by-car scene, instead of calmly stepping back through the OPEN DOOR into the brick building he just came out of. He also neglects to take down the licence plate, or, apparently, to tell the rest of the police department to look for that car in the area. It shows up again under the APARTMENT BUILDING of the woman they're trying to protect.
And the pathetic attempt at pathos. There's a scene where one guy is crying -- and i'm not making this up -- while passionately squeezing a handful of semi-digested peanuts.
Nothing fits. There's no motive for the way the murderer is working. The police suddenly divine patterns of how the murderer tells the police who the next victim will be, and if you've got two brain cells to rub together, you know who's going to be marked for death next. The murderer gives away far too much information, as if wanting to be caught, but it doesn't play out that way at all.
Positives. The acting by the main female lead was decent. There was nothing she personally could do about the script or the director, or the other actors. There's lots of blood, and other than the rubber arms, all the gory props are at least reasonably believable.
The movie generally looked good. It was appealing, appropriate, and professionally done up in post production. The music was good, and I'd say some of it was a poor copy of the dramatic classical music in "Old Boy," but this movie was made first, so maybe it was the inspiring predecessor.
Anyway, best avoided.