Torn

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2006)

I went into this film not knowing anything about it... other than that it was a horror film,and believe me, the feeling of not knowing what the hell the film genre is increased as the minutes passed by ( rather slowly too!!!).
The film starts off with 3 guys that are randomly in Amsterdam... going to whore houses, to weed cafés, etc etc etc.... nothing sinister about it other than the awful examples of cosmetic surgery on girls that probably used to write 'mr' in front of their names. Anyway... they get a tip off from some shifty looking guy to go to Slovakia.... by this point you're thinking ' i swear they said this was meant to be a horror film'.
On the train going towards Slovakia, they meet in a rather cliché manner the 'baddie' of the film, and you get given a piece of information that is completely useless up until when the 2nd guy gets killed ( i.e. nearly towards the end of the film). They get to a happy happy hostel where everyone is happily still taking drugs and still even more happily having cliché sex with random eastern Europeans... the sex fest carries on.... then one of the guys goes missing... Then another goes missing... but roth put a special little twist on this one... it looked like he was going to get away due to a change of heart of the baddie.... but it turns out his feet had been half cut off.... well.... there's a surprise and a half * yawns loudly* And then... surprise surprise... our hero appears... saved only by getting locked in a stock cupboard. Where the hell is the superman cape when you need one?! He tries to find his friends at the hostel, where there's a tiny little spin ( one of the only half clever things about this film) and then finds them in an alleged " art show" he gets taken to by one of the evil slut girls ( this is apparently the twist in the story....) and finds himself being subjected to the same torture his friends were subjected to.
.... he gets away because... get this... the butcher guy slips on Pax's blood, slips, and gets sawn to bits by a chainsaw. Then he gets away using what looks no more powerful than a golf cart, kills the shifty guy and the two girls, rescues another girl and BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Oh... and then he gets his own back on the baddie because he just so happened to be on the same train as him. Contradiction... he despises the actions of the bad guy ( and he said previously that he'd let girl die which haunted him for ages), yet he does the exact same thing to him? Fair play, but a bit more originality was needed!!!! I gave this film a 4/10 basically because the potential was there, but it was very badly executed because: a) the plot line was extremely confusing, with not enough emphasis on the REAL storyline ( who cares about people getting stoned and the red light district?.... to see a true glimpse of it, look no further than your own town!!) b) the start took up most of the film so nothing was developed thereafter c) The only SLIGHT sympathy was towards the knight in shining armour, and that was due to his character development that lasted roughly 30 seconds.
d) The way that Roth and Tarantino made all the little subtle clues link together to what really happened to the group of friends was good.... it just wasn't well developed and quite unrealistic in the way that he found exactly where they were just by talking to the two girls who were MIRACULOUSLY traceable.
And this film is one of the reasons why box offices are generally not doing well.