Good stuff first: It does well within the confines of a very low budget. It is shot through with a sense of humour so jet black and disturbingly bizarre that it comes close to transcending belief. The gushing blood, splattering gore and exploding viscera is extremely well rendered with occasional bargain basement CGI that is minimally intrusive. Sometimes it's like a series of brief and punchy acid flashbacks to Tod Browning's infamous 1932 pre-censor horror antique FREAKS. This is not a bad thing.
Not so good stuff: Horror movies used to be morality plays. For the most part, evil people and phenomena wreaked havoc and were then defeated by the forces of good. Sure, innocent people died in the process, but in the end the beast was vanquished or the armies of Satan defeated or whatever. In the best horror movies, the sources of evil or bad were humanised and believable - Hitchcock's PSYCHO being a prime example. Norman Bates evokes conflicting emotions of sympathy and revulsion in the audience. Sometimes in horror movies the bad guys won, but not very often.
Things gradually changed with movies like THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN and Friday THE 13TH. There were still surviving victims in some of those films, but this gradually became less and less common. The agents of evil also changed, so monstrous, inhuman and inhumane, that they no longer generated understanding or sympathy from the audience, rather they became cardboard machines with minimal function - to butcher and terrorise. No more, no less. At first this was different, new. Then films where no one survived the carnage became the norm. And now what was once different is the same and by default crashingly predictable and all rather boring.
In the seventies, INBRED would be something new. In the here and now, it's another also-ran among thousands. The victim characters are unsympathetic non-entities and no one cares if they live or die. Just as well, because it's clear from the outset and the tone of the film that none of them are going to make it. When characters do very little that equates comprehensible logical and contextual responses throughout to avoid their fate, that makes it a bit obvious where they're headed.
The redneck freaks are just as one-dimensional. Ugly, evil, vile, inhuman, yet largely characterless, they invoke revulsion but no other connection. Their leader, Jim, is clearly the glue which holds them together. If you had a shotgun trained on him and one of his minions and you were given the option, which one would you shoot? No prizes for guessing which in this type of film where normal human logic is an alien concept.
Yes, I know, behaviour in horror movies is often arbitrarily illogical to advance the plot. The character who wanders off alone, the people who go into the old dark house when they just know there's something evil in there. But there has to be at least some tenuous link with reasonable behavioural norms in order for an audience to suspend disbelief.
INBRED plays like a checklist wherein all the irrational and stupid options open to the running ducks are the ones that get a tick. The most ludicrous one being the character who is pinned to the floor with steel croquet hoops over his wrists. The clearance between the hoops and his wrists is so vast he could have freed himself at any time. But he just continues to lie there whilst he is tortured to death. This level of glaring stupidity can almost have you shouting at the screen: 'Just move your bloody hands ya moron!'
So here's the deal when figuring out whether or not to watch INBRED. It's a horror film with no real scares but plenty of blood and guts. All the characters you should be rooting for you won't care about and you'll figure they're all going to buy it anyway from the outset. And you'll be right about that. The villains of the piece will prevail, and you'll have figured that also. Some will get wasted, but not enough to make any difference to the pre-supposed and heavily signposted outcome. The motives of the inbred freaks and their genesis/history is never explored. They do what they do for fun and food because they are simply retarded, stupid and unpleasant and lack any moral insight.
I was faintly bored by it for the most part, but impressed by the black humour and some of the gore effects and what was achieved overall on a shoestring budget. If it wasn't for those elements, it would have been lucky to scrape a score of 2.
Not so good stuff: Horror movies used to be morality plays. For the most part, evil people and phenomena wreaked havoc and were then defeated by the forces of good. Sure, innocent people died in the process, but in the end the beast was vanquished or the armies of Satan defeated or whatever. In the best horror movies, the sources of evil or bad were humanised and believable - Hitchcock's PSYCHO being a prime example. Norman Bates evokes conflicting emotions of sympathy and revulsion in the audience. Sometimes in horror movies the bad guys won, but not very often.
Things gradually changed with movies like THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HALLOWEEN and Friday THE 13TH. There were still surviving victims in some of those films, but this gradually became less and less common. The agents of evil also changed, so monstrous, inhuman and inhumane, that they no longer generated understanding or sympathy from the audience, rather they became cardboard machines with minimal function - to butcher and terrorise. No more, no less. At first this was different, new. Then films where no one survived the carnage became the norm. And now what was once different is the same and by default crashingly predictable and all rather boring.
In the seventies, INBRED would be something new. In the here and now, it's another also-ran among thousands. The victim characters are unsympathetic non-entities and no one cares if they live or die. Just as well, because it's clear from the outset and the tone of the film that none of them are going to make it. When characters do very little that equates comprehensible logical and contextual responses throughout to avoid their fate, that makes it a bit obvious where they're headed.
The redneck freaks are just as one-dimensional. Ugly, evil, vile, inhuman, yet largely characterless, they invoke revulsion but no other connection. Their leader, Jim, is clearly the glue which holds them together. If you had a shotgun trained on him and one of his minions and you were given the option, which one would you shoot? No prizes for guessing which in this type of film where normal human logic is an alien concept.
Yes, I know, behaviour in horror movies is often arbitrarily illogical to advance the plot. The character who wanders off alone, the people who go into the old dark house when they just know there's something evil in there. But there has to be at least some tenuous link with reasonable behavioural norms in order for an audience to suspend disbelief.
INBRED plays like a checklist wherein all the irrational and stupid options open to the running ducks are the ones that get a tick. The most ludicrous one being the character who is pinned to the floor with steel croquet hoops over his wrists. The clearance between the hoops and his wrists is so vast he could have freed himself at any time. But he just continues to lie there whilst he is tortured to death. This level of glaring stupidity can almost have you shouting at the screen: 'Just move your bloody hands ya moron!'
So here's the deal when figuring out whether or not to watch INBRED. It's a horror film with no real scares but plenty of blood and guts. All the characters you should be rooting for you won't care about and you'll figure they're all going to buy it anyway from the outset. And you'll be right about that. The villains of the piece will prevail, and you'll have figured that also. Some will get wasted, but not enough to make any difference to the pre-supposed and heavily signposted outcome. The motives of the inbred freaks and their genesis/history is never explored. They do what they do for fun and food because they are simply retarded, stupid and unpleasant and lack any moral insight.
I was faintly bored by it for the most part, but impressed by the black humour and some of the gore effects and what was achieved overall on a shoestring budget. If it wasn't for those elements, it would have been lucky to scrape a score of 2.