Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  Another hit from the carrier bag at the back of my wardrobe:
LAST HOUSE IN THE WOODS – Very trashy attempt to update Italian horror with a vid-cam, yer mate Sergio Stivaletti, and, basically, a house in some woods. The vibe is more ‘backwoods throwback’ than giallo homage, but the emphasis is ultimately on the gore, here lovingly served up by the aforementioned and possibly quite generous Italo fx maestro Sergio. Grindhouse references aside, it reminds me more of the shot-on-video harsh splatter movies that came out of Germany in the nineties and noughties, but it’s not really like those either. Story-wise, don’t expect much. It’s another of those about one woman’s struggle to escape the clutches of a cannibalistic family after she’s captured for the sake of their pointy toothed tyke’s next ready-meal. The avalanche of poorly choreographed splatter, when it arrives, is undermined by a slightly dull build-up and a bit of running about. A trio of highly unrealistic wannabe-rapist drug thugs is in the mix, as are two mutant brothers, played by actors whose gurning, spasmodic performances left me with the impression that they could only have been taking the piss in a spectacularly joyless manner. It fell flat either way. LHITW is a total mess, badly filmed with incessant rapid zooms and the sort of style you might pick up on a media technology night school course (or less even), although it does aspire to some level of basic competence during its opening half hour, which plays a bit like an amateur version of ‘Hollyoaks’. There are far, far worse films in the annals of video junk, but LHITW does not make for a very ‘cinematic’ encounter, and people with great taste who for some reason decide to follow in my footsteps had better be prepared to feel uninvolved and turned off by this rancid, plastic experience. Having said all this, who cares? I liked it, I like shit films. Some shit films. There is enthusiasm here somehow, despite the flatness. Moreover, LHITW displays a willingness to embrace the dross at the kernel of its soul, and sometimes that’s all I require. |