For fans of the genre only - unfortunately...

Rating: 4/10 (14 July 2006)

Although I normally prefer other types of films, a good drama, a feel-good comedy, an art-house film, I need a good horror film from time to time. I had hoped this was one for me. It was not.
I had chosen this particular film because Ted Levine is in it. And having seen lots of his films, the choice was an easy one to make.
The problem was, apart from him, there was nothing to like about the film. And even he couldn't deliver a performance up to his standards.
When I read horror, I expect horror, and not just some cheap close-ups of blood gushing from various wounds. But this film didn't offer much else. I wasn't thrilled, I wasn't even disgusted by the amount of blood, I wasn't entertained. Because there was no horror, just the work of a director, who doesn't seem to know any other way of filming something apart from close-ups. The easy way, in my opinion.
One example. In a scene some fingers get cut off by an axe. This happens in a close-up, the viewer sees everything, blood spurts, the owner of the hand yells out in pain. I think that is an easy but not clever way to show what's happening. Let's compare it to a similar scene in L'empire des loups, a French film with Jean Reno. Here we have a police officer who isn't shy. He grabs the bad boy, sticks his hand under a huge paper knife ( the one you cut entire sheets of paper with) and yanks the knife down. You see the officer's distorted face while he is doing it. The bad boy cries out in pain. Similar scene, but so very different, because in the French film the viewer sees the hand being placed under the knife, but not in a close-up, in a corner of the room, and the rest happens in the imagination of the viewer. The ones who need gore can imagine it, the weaker ones can imagine something softer. So it's right for everybody and everybody will remember that scene as a good and satisfying scene. This is clever film making. Just bluntly showing everything isn't. Every film student can do that. Not showing things and yet letting people think they actually did see something, that is art.
Maybe this film was made for an audience who love blood and nothing else, don't expect clever film making, unusual solutions in showing simple slashing, new ideas for old hat. Then this film hit the target, no doubt. But everybody who wants to see a good horror film, turn away and look someplace else.
I give this film 4 out of ten. One for Ted Levine, one for the fuel station house which was built from scratch in the Moroccon desert, one for the CGI faces which really looked very good. And one for the laugh I had about a film, which could have been so much better.