Lots of blood and thats the end of the good parts

Rating: 2/10 (13 December 2006)

SPOILERS
If you are into bloody gutsy movies full of gore and general unpleasantness then this is going to be an hour and fifty minutes fairly well spent. The whole thing for me was ruined however by one simple oversight on the shock factor: The film avoids all violence towards animals, except a few flagrantly staged punches toward a dog hanging off someones arm, yet feels comfortable enough to show a long rape scene with an infant baby in the foreground.
Now, on the scale of bad things, whats worse? Brutal rape or hurting an animal? Even the most sadistic torture you could perform to an animal is less bad on the karmic scale than beating and raping a young girl. Ask anyone, they will likely agree unless they work for PETA.
Aside from that, the film is generally a "I really hope someone, just let it be anyone, dies soon" kind of experience with one massive bout of killing followed by one massive bout of suspense. Not the good kind though, its the kind where you just want something to happen. Anything will do. Aliens invading, Skippy telling us that Joey has fallen down a mineshaft... anything! You just stop caring about who is going to die next or who is going to get hurt. How much can you care about someone getting whacked with a pan after you've just seen someone get shot through the head point blank? Half way through the movie its really hard to even care what happens. After most of the characters are just straight up brutally killed, its hard to relate to the people left alive, and its even harder to stay emotionally attached to them since half the "good" guys have been killed in one swoop. After that point you expect everything thats going to happen, even if you cant tell what its going to be.
I have to also add that anyone who has been shot in the stomach and the throat - twice - with a shotgun is certainly never going to be able to stand up let alone draw breath. The same shotgun had been used earlier in the film to blow a guys head clean off, yet three hits with it in what some people would describe as "critical areas" leaves one mutant freak with enough gall and resolve to stand up and aim the damn gun right back for revenge! After watching that, I was surprised that the guy who took an axe to the head didn't get back into the action and start gnawing peoples knees or something. In a film like this realism is something thats only really broadly skirted, but two hits to the throat with a shotgun usually means that even if you head is somehow still attached that you would bleed to death in about ten seconds. THe very action of standing up would have squirted half the guys blood out through his neck from the change in blood pressure.
I have to say that Im less than impressed. For bloodbaths, its pretty good... people die, there's lots of blood. There's a fair amount of shock in it too. As for this being a good film... this isn't one. Bloodbaths usually have at least some degree of emotional attachment to the characters, this one has none. Whatever was built at the start is utterly ruined by the killing spree, and whatever is left after that is certainly not enough to give a damn about the ending.