Cut

Cut opened today in Australia and I went to see it after waiting ages for it to be released.

After the movie finished, I was a little disappointed but now when I think about it, it actually was a good movie. I thought it wasn't as good as Scream but way better than Scream 2, Scream 2 had very little blood or violence which made it very weak but Cut is amazing ecause it gets away with displaying so much blood. It takes a while for the movie to get into the action, but when it does that's when it starts to get interesting. Australian horror movies usually aren't very good (anyone remember Body Melt and Out of The Body?) but Cut is very enjoyable.

Even though the story doesn't make a lot of sense when all is revealed and the ending stinks, Cut is a lot of fun when it comes to the death scenes (which is what people are going to see this for anyway) they are very creative and gross and very hilarious.

When Cut comes to threatres near you, go see it. It won't make much sense, but it will be fun.

Cut doesn't restrain the blood, it's not disturbing, it's intended to be funny, and it is.

While filming an 80's horror movie called 'Hot Blooded', the director is brutally murdered and the leading lady is scarred as she survives the attack and manages to kill murderer. After all of this, the production is abandoned and the stock reels are left to gather dust. So a group of filmmakers decide to pick up where the film left off even though they're warned by people to keep away from the film, as the last person who was interested in the flick turned up dead in the cinema while watching the film. From this it's labelled as a cursed production. Not taking these warnings seriously the crew goes ahead with the production and they get the original star of the movie to return from Hollywood to reprise her role, but not as the daughter but the mother. But again the murders start occurring with the cast and crew getting butchered by an unknown figure dressed up as the film's killer.

Look what 'Scream' started! Hey, I enjoy those films, but mostly everything else that followed on afterwards were annoying and pointless excuses. During this stage the sub-genre came back with vengeance, but it wasn't much of a good thing as they were mostly unsuccessful and unoriginal attempts, where they followed the derivative pattern of the Scream franchise. 'Cut' which is an independent Australian take on the textbook slasher genre is purely shonky garbage that lacks basically everything and shamelessly knocks off every other slasher flick. But you know what, I found it a cheesy delight. Yeah, It's gawd awful and highly forgettable, but it's a bit of ala good cheap fun while it lasted. Although I did hate it when I originally came across it, but the second time around I knew what I was getting myself into and it worked better for it. It was just like helping myself to a nice slice cheesecake again, but this time it wasn't so sweet.

The film came out around the same time as 'Scream 3' and 'Urban Legends: The Final Cut' did, which all three follow the same structure of using a movie within a movie. 'Scream 3' is obviously the strongest of the three, but I would actually watch this trash over Urban Legends: The Final Cut. Though, it did seem more of a throwback to the 80's slashers than that of one of Scream's bastard offspring. Pretty much the film is given b-grade treatment and that shows up in the script and performances. The dialog is truly unimaginative and hardly comes up with any surprises and suspense. While, the performances are pure mockery and Molly Ringwald takes the crown for it. She plays the wash-up actress returning to finish the cursed flick and I had good fun with her laughably ridiculous send-up performance. She provides the bite here and nails it down perfectly. The rest were mostly recognizable Australian TV stars (that's if you're an Australian) with a ravishing Jessica Napier leading the cast with the likes of Stephen Curry and Frank Roberts. Also pop singer (and supposed actress) Kylie Minogue makes a cameo appearance in the opening just to be hacked up! Nice. These teens mostly followed the formula of horny and dim-witted kids that have nothing better to do but to be killed. Sometimes it feels like they just waiting in queue, because they have no real substance to be there.

The plot starts off rather interestingly, then heads into a mystery phase where red herrings pop up, but then it makes a sudden u-turn where it becomes a somewhat satire on the horror genre. Simply it's rather choppy and when it comes to the explanation for all of this madness I was kind of left thinking… oh my. This when it tries to twist back onto itself in a clever manner, but sadly it falls along way. But don't you just love an opening ending. Also it sports some pop culture references and a self referential, tongue-in-cheek approach. Predictability makes its way in rather early and the jokes can become over-stated at times, but it knows that by poking fun at itself quite a bit. The atmosphere looses a bit of edge because of the humour taking away the bleakness, but still the isolated grand old mansion where they are filming has some neat touches that added 'some' spookiness. The cinema scene is done rather nicely too.

Now, now we know we want gore and nudity when watching this type of flick, but sadly there's no nudity to be found and the gore is pretty standard, if lacking but it's more then decent for such low-budget flick. There are one or two creative deaths, but the rest are systematic. The killer wasn't bad but when he spoke it kind of hurt it I thought, well the smart-ass attitude didn't sit well with me. Another notes of the production which were dire ranged from the cut-away editing, out-of-place soundtrack and Kimble Rendall's direction lacked execution and was pretty careless, but these contributing factors pull together to add some sort of sheer entertainment to all of this badness.

The imagination matches the budget that's for sure, but heck this lousy slasher wasn't trying to be anything else. Pure schlock that's slightly amusing!

CUT is called an Australian Scream. This mainly has to due to the characters mentioning movies during the entire thing. I enjoyed it myself until the last 15 minutes where everything started to jumble. Parts I enjoyed though were: The killer's weapon (Which reminded me of over-the-top 80s B-Movies), Molly Ringwald (Of Course), and the cameo by Kylie Minogue. Some cliches, some gore, and some entertainment. 5/10.

I can see where this one can be called the Australian "Scream." Kind of has the same feel as these new "slasher" movies. The story's kinda weak, but if you're expectations are low, than this should prove entertaining. It was refreshing, too to actually see some of the bloody stuff, instead of all these cheezy "cut-away" murders lately. I thought the acting was pretty decent, but the killer's identity is pretty flimsy, not really explained too well. Overall though, I was pleasantly entertained by a new "b-movie" that I found to be much better than a lot of theatrical horror out there lately....6/10

The idea of a film crew being butchered while shooting a horror film has been done before (in the obscure 1986 flick "Return To Horror High", and probably some other time even before that). The idea of teens making "hip" references to other horror films of the past has been done before (in "Scream"). And so on...Yet, "Cut" is overall an entertaining movie, and if you don't pay more than a dollar to see it, you'll get your money's worth. In the first 20 minutes in particular the filmmakers seem to be onto something different, but then the movie gets increasingly derivative. Still, the special effects are good and Molly Ringwald is perfectly cast as the washed-up ex-B-movie queen. (**1/2)