Inspired by true events. Few words strike fear into my heart than those. Usually it's a poor substitute for a well-plotted movie with a lot of really awful stuff that's based on nothing but the film maker's attempt to pander to the lowest common denominator.
The generically named Slaughter claims to be so inspired. How generic is the name? Well, I thought this Slaughter was the one where a bunch of actors find themselves in a Japanese snuff film. When, in fact, this is the Slaughter where a woman on the run from an abusive boyfriend finds herself on a farm populated by menacing rednecks.
The Boy opined that he would like to see rednecks be cast as the heroes once.
The "true events" may be a 100 year old story where a farm family lured city folk to their doom to steal their stuff and then fed them to their pigs. (I think I saw that on HBO's "Autopsy". ) That sort of fits, though very loosely.
Anyway, the story as it's told here is that Faith (Amy Shiels) is fleeing her abusive boyfriend, and ends up befriending Lola (Lucy Holt) and staying with her at the family farm. The first half of the film abounds with menace: Men in clubs, the old boyfriends, the men at the farm--hey, they don't call it menace for nothing.
This film's biggest problem is that the menace is dull, virtually Lifetime movie-of-the-week girl stuff about Faith and Amy's horrible upbringings. This does come in to play later, but that doesn't actually make it any less slow.
When the action gets going, the movie picks up tremendously. It veers into a slightly unexpected territory and plays out in slightly unexpected ways. It only goes off the rails at the end--which, unfortunately, is the by-word for this festival's movies. (Four, maybe five, depending on how you reckon it, out of the six movies so far have pretty much gone the "everyone dies" route which is just a cheap out.)
The only other thing I'd add, maybe weirdly, is that the actresses seemed to old for their parts. It's not something I notice, usually, but Faith is between 18-21 and Amy is under 18. This is important to the plot, but I would've guessed both girls were in their mid-20s.
Verdict: The action parts are better than the scare parts.
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The "true events" may be a 100 year old story where a farm family lured city folk to their doom to steal their stuff and then fed them to their pigs.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if that's where Thomas Harris got the idea for Hannibal.
Anyone who has worked with pigs knows that they're the ultimate disposal machine and completely indiscriminate.
ReplyDeleteNot that I have. But everyone I know who has said you have to be careful to stay outside the pen when you feed them; they won't discriminate between their food and your flesh.
My great-grandfather used to castrate pigs by slopping them, then while they were eating come up behind them with a knife. Apparently they wouldn't stop eating.