After a trip out this weekend I stumbled on a market stall selling hundreds of horror films, my time was limited so I picked the first four that appealed to me and bought them. This was the first one I saw, from the producers of the Saw and starring Bill Moseley surely it’s worth a punt?
The storyline is basic, it follows the Landry family as they go about a normal day. The wife sets off for work and the husband played by Jesse Metcalfe (who I’m informed is the fit gardener from Desperate Housewives) looks after the child but he leaves the kid for a split second as he goes to fetch some sun cream from inside the house. This was a massive mistake as John Kozlowski played by the wonderful Bill Moseley grabs the kid and makes a run with him. Craig Landry (the dad) tries to chase him but after a short car chase he cannot find his child’s abductor.
Eventually the child is found dead and Kozlowski is arrested and sentenced but in an exchange deal with the cops to reveal the location of his other victims he’s only sentenced to 25 years to life, meaning he could be free in 10 years. This doesn’t sit well with the Landry’s especially the mother who want Kozlowski dead for what he did to their child and who can blame them?
The Good
The whole what would I do in their situation is the best part of this film, it really makes you think if you could do what they do to the man who tortured and killed their child. This is pretty much the whole story and it’s quite well done. The ending of the film throws in a huge twist which I admit I didn’t see coming at all, if it didn’t have this sting in the tail then it would have been quite a poor film.
The torture scenes are brutal and look immensely painful, it’s obvious the people who produced the Saw had something to do with this film based purely on the torture scenes.
The Bad
I found a lot of the acting to be quite bad, apart from Bill Moseley who’s screen time isn’t much about acting and more about being in a lot of pain the other actors weren’t that good. This put a downer on the film for me all the way through.
It needed something more, how they got hold of Kozlowski was well done but not explained enough for my liking. On a whole the film was a bit of a let down, as with quite a few films like this the premise is great but it just wasn’t executed right. I’d score this much much lower if it wasn’t for the ending.
Overall Score
Acid Horrors 