Sundance 2010 Review: THE VIOLENT KIND - One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Director: The Butcher Brothers
Starring: Taylor Cole, Tiffany Shepis, Bret Roberts, Joe Egender, Cory Knauf, Joseph McKelheer, Christina Grace, Nick Tagas
Synopsis:
Jazz, Cody, and Q are just the sort of upstanding young citizens you might expect of second-generation members of an outlaw biker gang. So when the boys take a break from their busy schedule of sex, drugs, and stompin’ fools to attend a righteous party at a secluded cabin, what could possibly go wrong?
As it happens, everything. The soirée goes to hell, people start dying, and a fine biker mama gets possessed by . . . well, by something foul indeed. It’s all more perverse fun from the utterly demented minds of writers/directors the Butcher Brothers (aka Phil Flores and Mitchell Altieri).
Review:
Before I begin to tear this movie apart, I just want you to know that this was a movie I was looking forward to watching at the Sundance Film Festival. I’m a big horror movie buff and from what I saw, it had all the makings of a decent little horror film. Unfortunately, the movie was a waste of my time. Out of over 5,000 submissions that The Sundance Film Festival gets, this movie was one of the very few that made it in, and I have no idea how or why this movie was allowed in the film line-up at Sundance.
I have nothing good at all to say about this film, it was unforgivably bad. Everything about it was top notch awfulness. The story was incoherent, you never had any idea what in the hell was going on. Nothing is ever explained! I honestly don’t think the filmmakers even knew what kind of movie they were making, and if they did, it didn’t show in the film. The script and dialogue were atrocious. The movie was trying to be serious but there is no way in hell anyone would be able to take this movie seriously. There was nothing natural about the dialogue, it made me wonder if the movie actually had a script or if they just let these actors improvise in front of the camera. Either way, it sucked ass.
Then there’s the insanely bad acting from everyone in the film! And out of everybody cast, it’s like they chose the worst possible actor in the entire world to play the lead role. Then there was this gang of 1950‘s rockabilly characters that were so bad, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for them. It's like they were all trying to pull off a crazy Jack Nicholson impression, but a very very bad one. It was laughable, and not the good kind of laughing.
There are some movies that are so bad you can’t help but enjoy them. The Violent Kind is not this kind of bad movie. I took no joy at all in watching this film and neither did the audience. In fact, I believe over half of the audience that showed up to watch the movie ended up walking out of it. I felt so bad when someone I met at the festival showed up for the film after I recommended the movie to them. They sat down in front of us and about 20 minutes into the film I leaned down and apologized for recommending the film to them. They then replied with “What in the hell is this!? What is going on!?”
The movie is worse than a lot of those direct to DVD horror films that you see on the shelves at Blockbuster Video. I’m just completely shocked that a film this bad was selected to be a part of the Sundance Film Festival. It was the worst movie going experience that I had at the festival, and definitely one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, even for a B horror film -- which I actually do have a high tolerance for. I tend to enjoy B horror films for what they are. But like I said, there is nothing enjoyable about this film at all. I strongly recommend that you stay as far away from this movie as possible. And if for some reason you are now interested in watching it because of how bad I said it is, good luck to you.