On a snowboard trip in the Rocky Mountains (and the following roadtrip), three 40-year-old Canadian guys (oh, sorry, according to the movie they're twentysomethings from Jersey) become the victims of a pair of cannibalistic locals.
The film opens strangely: A guy that looks like a bulimic Jesus is running naked through the woods, cut up and bleeding from what looks like a rough torture. Without showing much, we assume (from his howling scream) that he is caught by whatever was pursuing him. From there, we move to some kind of house party where a few unattractive middle-aged men posing as twentysomethings hook up with girls so far out of their league they're not even in the same sport. After a good bit of drinking, drugs, sex, and some bathroom humour, we move to the actual plot which really didn't need the previous twenty minutes: The three guys, after crashing the car in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, become prey for some backwoods nutjobs. One of the most damaging elements of this film is most evident here, in the first twenty minutes. The worst parts are the acting and writing. In this genre, those two technical elements aren't always the most important. I mean, look how much Dario Argento has accomplished and he can't write to save his life. Unfortunately, the guys behind 'Scarce' are building the entire film on those two things and they're certainly no Argento. Anyway, what matters here is the horror. Luckily, the film does manage to get a good bit of horror; but, mostly, it just feels like gore & violence & torture for the sake of it. There's no real cause or reason for the majority of it other than to show what the filmmakers were capable of. Sadly, they weren't capable of much. The gore, while excessive, was far from believable and was far from grotesque, as it seems they thought it was. Essentially, what the film ends up turning into is a strange hybrid of midwest Wolf Creek mixed with The Most Dangerous Game. Some of the hunting scenes are interesting, but they just end with an extremely lame and unthrilling climax. Overall, it's just a pretty basic, below-average torture flick without much merit except the funny Canadian accents and some poorly done gore.
Final verdict: 3.75/10. Meh.
-AP3-
The film opens strangely: A guy that looks like a bulimic Jesus is running naked through the woods, cut up and bleeding from what looks like a rough torture. Without showing much, we assume (from his howling scream) that he is caught by whatever was pursuing him. From there, we move to some kind of house party where a few unattractive middle-aged men posing as twentysomethings hook up with girls so far out of their league they're not even in the same sport. After a good bit of drinking, drugs, sex, and some bathroom humour, we move to the actual plot which really didn't need the previous twenty minutes: The three guys, after crashing the car in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania, become prey for some backwoods nutjobs. One of the most damaging elements of this film is most evident here, in the first twenty minutes. The worst parts are the acting and writing. In this genre, those two technical elements aren't always the most important. I mean, look how much Dario Argento has accomplished and he can't write to save his life. Unfortunately, the guys behind 'Scarce' are building the entire film on those two things and they're certainly no Argento. Anyway, what matters here is the horror. Luckily, the film does manage to get a good bit of horror; but, mostly, it just feels like gore & violence & torture for the sake of it. There's no real cause or reason for the majority of it other than to show what the filmmakers were capable of. Sadly, they weren't capable of much. The gore, while excessive, was far from believable and was far from grotesque, as it seems they thought it was. Essentially, what the film ends up turning into is a strange hybrid of midwest Wolf Creek mixed with The Most Dangerous Game. Some of the hunting scenes are interesting, but they just end with an extremely lame and unthrilling climax. Overall, it's just a pretty basic, below-average torture flick without much merit except the funny Canadian accents and some poorly done gore.
Final verdict: 3.75/10. Meh.
-AP3-