Dreadful

Rating: 1/10 (16 March 2006)

Spoilers herein.
THHE is the worst film I have seen in a long time. Maybe gorehounds can get off on this kind of thing, but for the more well-adjusted among us, it really has no redeeming qualities. Plot has taken a backseat to fractured narratives and stereotypical, flat characters; fright to wanton and gratuitous violence.
It's almost amusing in some ways, like a spaghetti western. All the horror staples are here. The most deserted gas station in the world, the desolate setting, the creepy degenerate running the gas station, disfigured nuclear mutants that feed on human flesh. The horror-cliché stereotypical nuclear family is there too, complete with gruff gun-toting conservative dad, saintly matriarch, pregnant young woman, wuss who doesn't like guns, innocent baby, and eye-candy daughter. (don't get excited, there's no skin. I mean, if a horror movie is going to be horrible, they could at least throw you a bone, right?) If you don't want spoilers (smarter would be to not see the movie at all), stop reading this review now.
Some lowlights of the film include numerous skull splittings with pickaxes, a mutant-on-girl rape scene, a mutant nursing from a new mother before killing her execution style, a character being locked into a freezer full of disembodied limbs, and a few unmerciful renderings of a shotgun headshot suicide and someone's fingers being hacked off with an axe. Also included are images of a gutted family pet, and a radioactive mutant biting the head off a parakeet and squeezing the bird's blood down his throat like it were a can of easy cheese. Of course these all are accompanied by various other 'filler' violence that is presented in ways that are not very shocking, not surprising, but rather deeply predictable and seem more like an advertisement for whomever did the prosthetics than a dramatic device.
The characters are two-dimensional and behave in stupid and predictable ways, such as running off on their own, splitting up at night, and going off alone to investigate strange noises. We're never shown the human side of the irradiated mutants, which I think was a huge missed opportunity for character development. Most of the mutants only speak to utter sinister clichés, apart from a monologue delivered by strange mutant reminiscent of the elephant-man. It's really too bad the writers didn't see fit to let us learn more about him and see a human side . Some of the screen time used for cheap, ineffective scares could have been better utilized here.
All in all, it's bad, even for a horror movie, and suffers from the usual predictability and stupid behavior by the characters. It might be the most violent film I have seen, but it's not frightening - rather, it alternates between wanton, unintentionally funny, boring, and grueling.
On a scale of 1 to 10, this movie gets 0 stars and owes me two, but IMDb requires me to give at least one.