Unhinged - Will's Review

When 3 girls on a road-trip have a car accident in an area known for 'disappearing' girls, they are taken in by a strange mother / daughter combo, and forced to wait out a storm. When one of them decides to brave the woods alone to cut to a nearby town with a phone, it (quite predictably) isn't long before she joins the numbers of the missing...

Only last month I was talking about how a bad ending can ruin an otherwise fine movie, and why a great ending can elevate an average film; This time it was defiantly the latter!
The bulk of the movie is, while badly acted, at least quite well paced - we learn things at a decent rat, and the low body-count never really stands out.

That said, the time-scale of the events depicted seems a little odd - day seems to become night with alarming regularity, while the characters will act like mere minuets have passed (at one point our heroin wakes in the morning to find her bed-ridden friend missing, then suddenly it's nightfall, bus she's still barley casually interested as to her friend's whereabouts).

So there are enough flaws to take the otherwise compelling story about the Mother figure of the houses hatred of all men, and drag it down to, as I have said, and average movie.

It's quite obvious that there is going to be a twist; but rather than try to hide the fact, the film makers have chosen to hint at a dozen different potabilities - this of course means that when the twist is finally revealed, it will be something you've considered; but (for me at least) only briefly, and certainly not so seriously that it ruins the surprise.

Because of the acting and strange passage of time, I cant quite bring myself to stick the "Will Recommends" tag on this one... but I still think you should check it out.

Body Count: 4 (and a few pieces)

Boob Count: 2 Pairs

Most Memorable Death: AXE!

---

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.

The Slayer - Will's Review

The movie opens with a kill!

Awesome! Straight to the action!  Except... No; No, it was a dream. It turns out that if there's one thing this movie can not be accused of, it's 'cutting straight to the action'


The pacing is terrible - the small cast (four main cast, and I believe only one other person in the entire movie) and isolated location mean that there is a LOT of time to kill. Thankfully the acting was passable, or the length of time we had to spend in the group's company would have been unbearable! That said, one thing I did like about the group is that they were all adults, not teens, which is rare.

The plot (such as it is) revolves around a surrealist painter (Kay) who isn't doing so well in the mental health department, her husband decides to take her for a break, along with her brother and his wife, to a borrowed house on an otherwise uninhabited island, with no means of contacting the outside world.

This variant on the 'isolated cabin' isn't the only thematic horror stalwart on display though; when people do (eventually) start dying, Kay becomes convinced that her dreams are to blame, and makes an effort to stay awake (this is before NOES by the way).

The deaths (5 if you count the one in the opening dream) are all fairly well executed (although one wouldn't work AT ALL as depicted), and the lighting is atmospheric. Really, with a better ending and a few more characters to improve the pacing, this could have been a fairly good movie.

The Slayer (the creature that haunts Kay's dreams) is never actually glimpsed during the killings, and when it is seen, it is only by Kay - it's possible that Kay herself may be directly responsible for the deaths, which would have been a great ending - that the heroin was in-fact the killer but didn't know it!

Unfortunately, that isn't the ending we get.

Some people would argue that what follows (highlight the white strips to read it) is a big spoiler, as it's basically the end of the movie. I however, feel that it is an overused device, and one that should be stated as the tag-line of every movie that uses it, so that I would know not to bother with that movie. (that said, it virtually was the tagline - I read the description on the box and more-or-less guessed how the film would end).

The entire movie was Kay's dream.  

I. Hate. "it was all a dream" endings!!! They are lazy, usually (as here) serve oh to save the writer from coming up with a real ending, and they waste the viewers time; we spent 90mins of our lives watching something that didn't happen (even within the fictional universe of the movie) Pah!

The is a little more to the ending than that - a little extra that I guess is supposed to be some kind of 'twist' - but it doesn't work.

Body Count: 5
Boob Count: 1 pair
Most Memorable Death: Hook Line and stinker.

---

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the main post for this movie.