The Tortured (2010) 1h 19m

I've never really been a fan of "torture porn" style horror.  Sure, some of the Hostels were okay, the first one or two Saw movies had their moment, and a few others are definitely watchable but just not my thing.  However, this may be my first foray into what could be considered "revenge porn."

The Tortured begins with a couple dealing with the kidnapping, murder, and subsequent trial of the man that did this to their six year-old son.  After he gets 25-to-life as opposed to life without parole, the couple decide that the kidnapper needs to be punished, tortured, for his crimes.

This film is basically broken into two sections with small bridges in between.  You have the establishment of the agony of losing a child in such a terrible manner and how devastated the couple is.  It's mainly to allow themselves and the viewer to feel that this course of action is justified.  The other revolves around the torture of this man.  There are a combination of introspective moral moments and a questioning of the couple's actions.  We get handed some serious twists here and there, but what this comes down to is do the means justify the ends, vice versa, or, is there any real justice at all?

The saving grace of this film is the ending.  I really don't care about the guy's nipple being burnt with a soldiering iron or any of that other crap.  The couple has an odd catharsis to which only the viewer knows the truth and that made me run back through the film in my head.  So it makes me actually think of it when it's done, but honestly I'll probably forget about it in a month.

I give The Tortured 1 prison jumpsuit costume out of 5:

A Haunting at Silver Falls (2013) 1h 36m

I feel like I'm watching the same movie over and over during this Cut.  What is the appeal of teenage girls either being possessed or being the person that sees a ghost?  Then why do you spend a bunch of time trying to make it seem that those around them think they're having a mental issue?  I feel like the horror genre needs to put an unspoken ban on this plot base to make people do actual work and come up with something new and creative.  While I'm complaining here, can we also get rid of the big twist ending at in the last ten minutes of the film?  It's not good.  We all liked the reveal in the Sixth Sense, but since then it's been downhill, even for Mr. M. Night Shamballahdragon.

A Haunting at Silver Falls focuses around a girl that moves from L.A. to South Dakota after her father's death.  She moves in with her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend/husband/sub (I'm not sure).  After finding a ring in the woods she begins to see ghost girls.  Our first real experience with the ghosts is some sort of weird Enter Sandman scene where the ghost tries to take the ring off the girls finger and then eats all her Ferrero Rochers.  Seriously.  Ghosts don't need to be on a fuckin' diet.

We come to learn that these girls were murdered by their dad, but that's not the truth and there are three rings that when put together the truth is discovered.  I would much rather Captain Planet comes out.  That's the only reference I can think of with rings, aside from maybe Mandarin which is less interesting that Captain Planet.

This movie was just recycled crap.  Boring recycled crap.  The ghost girls looked good if you want a zombie version of possessed Regan from the Exorcist.  The acting was okay.  The character development was all a bag of floppy dicks though.  I hated everyone in this movie.  The dorky guy that is kind of her boyfriend is an asshole, the "cool" guy is an asshole, all the adults are assholes, our main girl is just annoying.  If I could do ADR for the DVD release of this film I would make it so every time someone opened their mouths a fart noise would come out.  Then I'd market it as the comedy of the year and sell it for the same age group as that shitty Indian horror from was from last Cut.

I give A Haunting at Silver Falls 1 picture of the Silver Falls out of 5 for being visually well done:

enter sandman but the ghost eats all the ferro roches

Housebound (2014) 1h 47m

Hi kids!  Do you like twists?  Do you want more twists than an M. Night Shammalammadingdong movie?  Oh man do we have something special for you!  So special I'm using this .jpg from the movie to pretty much show how I felt for most of this film.

I'm more of the woman on the left than the bloody woman...

Housebound started out really slow.  I wasn't sure if this was meant to be a horror film or a dry British horror-comedy.  I think it was the second option here.  We start with a botched ATM robbery which leads to our main character being sentenced to 8-months house arrest at her mother's house.  At first it seems that the house is haunted.  We see a ghost arm, hear some weird stories, find out this place used to be a halfway house where a murder was committed, and experience tons of electrical issues.

It's not ghosts, but we find that out later.

It's assumed the weird neighbor committed the murder, and we waste time on that for a bit.  He's only good for plot info about Eugene.  Who is Eugene?  He's the guy that has lived in the walls of their house for like fucking ever!  But he wasn't the murderer...

The murderer ends up being the therapist that is there to help our girl rehabilitate or something during her house arrest.  He was on some sort of internship or fellowship at the halfway house and killed a girl after an incident.  His head eventually explodes though so it works out.

This movie started out at a snail's pace.  So much so that I invested in watching one of our cats play with his toy bat.  It was adorable and a much better watch for the first 15 minutes.  Otherwise though, when this film starts to peak it stays at that point for a while.  I may or may not watch this again if given the chance.  I'm not sure.  You do get to see a cheese grater used as an actual weapon, so that's a plus.

I give Housebound 2 ankle monitors out of 5:

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