Review of Chaos

Chaos (I) (2005)
4/10
Watching this FILTH may save your life, mmkay
2 November 2016
This movie already annoyed me before it even properly started… The first screen depicts a written message in which is stated that hundreds of girls get abducted and sexually abused every year, and that the producers of this movie wish to illustrate these crimes as graphic and realistic as possible in order to warn parents and potential victims about the dangers of meeting up with strangers. Seriously, shenanigans like these make me furious because A) you honestly don't need to show explicit rape footage and sadist murder in order to pass the message of kids having to be wary of strangers and B) it's 300% hypocritical! If you want to make a raw and shocking exploitation movie, that's perfectly fine, but don't pretend even for one second that cinema like this has a deeper social moral or an educational task to fulfill. Perhaps my rant is slightly exaggerated, but pretentious messages like that at the beginning of a film irritate me enormously! Furthermore, I honestly don't understand where all the commotion with regards to this film comes from. Some people (mainly the haters) call it a rip-off of Wes Craven's "Last House on the Left", whereas others (primarily the fans) refer to it as an unofficial remake of that same exploitation landmark. To me personally it's just another entry in the "rape & revenge" sub-genre of exploitation cinema that is admittedly a lot more similar LHOTL than most titles. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, and then once more in the years 2000-2010, there were dozens of movies cashing in on the success of LHOTL (and, ironically enough, Wes Craven stole the idea of Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring") so why would one more form a problem? The only significant difference that "Chaos" has to offer is that it goes another step further when it comes to depicting misogynous cruelty and repulsive murder. Two young girls, Emily and Angelica, have planned to go to a rave in the woods, much against the will of Angelica's mother. They arrive so early that the rave hasn't even started yet, so they tag along with a guy named Swam who claims that he has ecstasy in his cabin. They end up in the hands of Chaos and his accomplices. Chaos is a dangerously deranged psychopath and rapist, and the poor girls' final hours will be excruciating and miserable. Then, in good old LHOTL tradition, the rapists somehow end up at the parents' house and another violent confrontation ensues. Yes, the violence is sickening. What Chaos does to the white girl's nipple and especially how he kills the black girl is truly disgusting and will make even the most hardened horror viewer squirm in his/her seat. But let's not exaggerate, neither. "Chaos" is not the most depraved film ever made, even though I'm sure that is what writer/director David DeFalco likes to believe. Kevin Gage, who's biggest moment of glory was to appear in Michael Mann's "Heat" in 1995, gives a more than solid performance as the titular sicko Chaos, but in spite of that he will never grow out to become a cult/exploitation icon like Krug Stillo (David Hess) did after "Last House on the Left".
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