B/B+


Props to the French. This was one helluva brutal, violent and insane flick. It's pretty much a mixture of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel. Four young folks end up in a small offroad motel where they are greeted by an inbred, German Nazi cannibal family who likes to torture people before devouring them. Mayhem ensues.

I am 100% certain that Joe would love this. The movie is rated NC-17 in the US and that for a good reason. It is, without a doubt, the most brutal movie I've seen in a couple of years. Sometimes it's so violent it just gets insane. At times it takes itself a little too serious considering what it is. The supposed Germans (all played by French actors, yet named something like Karl von Geislar or Hans von Flack or Goetz or something to that extent) keep shouting phrases in German in the vein of "Pure Blood!" or "Arbeit macht frei! ("Work makes free" - a "slogan" at the gates of most concentration camps during WWII). The amounts of ciolence and sick stuff here makes you forget about many of the film's flaws, though. The movie is very energetic, frenetically filmed and well-edited. This one really does pushes the boundaries, unlike something like Hostel. Among other things, we get an exploding head (not unsimilar to the one in Scanners), a rotating saw through someone's chest, part of a neck bitten off and Achilles' tendons ripped out. This one is really harsh.

Now if only it had some really likeable characters we could care for, it'd be great, but no such luck. Most characters are either uninteresting or just unsympathetic, so I could care less whether they'd be slaughtered or not. That made their plight seem less cruel. It's still a very visceral experience (in the purest sense of the word, heh) that should be seen by all horror fans.

FRONTIER(S) - 8/10 (A-)

I liked it a lot. It was really brutal. I would have given it a B+ but the finale pushed it to an A-.

7/10 -> B-

Very brutal movie, with not so subtle political views. That political parts almost drown the story, but thankfully the horror and gore prevail and make this into a really sick and twisted kill ride.

This is insanely derivative shit of the highest order. I was watching this with Trixster and he gave it a great description, its the Doomsday of horror films.

It has no identity of its own, it jumps from film to film like a drunkard, one minute its The Descent, next its The Hills have Eyes and then its suddenly The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Its like a low-fi Hollywood horror devoid of interesting characters and interesting story.

Its not just America that can make horror shite like Saw or Hostel so can Europe. The fact I watched the brilliance that was Inside before it made the contrast even worse.

Gulli stole all my lines, so I'll just say that I agree with everything he said. I'll also steal one of his lines and say that putting this side-by-side with Inside is a great way to see horror done right and wrong.

None of the characters are likeable, interesting, or unique, the story is hopelessly generic, there are some truly bizarre and wacky tonal shifts without any reason, and it just throws some political commentary on top as if that'll make a difference as to its quality, completely forgetting to mention it throughout the entire bulk of the film.

Unlike Inside, the gore here is needlessly over-the-top and serves no real purpose other than to disgust us. There's no artistic or aesthetic value to it, unlike the great horrors of the past. And I'm not usually a hater of the shaky cam, but here it's used to such a nauseating and disorienting effect that I can understand why most of you hate it.

So yeah, shitty flick. You know you're in trouble when the best stuff comes during the opening credits.