User Reviews

I love horror films, im OK with lots of shaky cam and im a big fan of home invasion films. which made hate crime a definite must see for me.

within 20 minutes I realised it was going to be hard work watching this all the way through, not because it was disturbing or difficult to watch on moral grounds, no... because it was boring as hell and had a lot going on that was just stupid.

its a nice Jewish families dinner, I think for the kids birthday. luckily for the viewer dad is videoing everything. there's a knock at the door and 3 masked guys with swastika tattoos burst in and shout lots of nasty stuff.

they then proceed to shoot the kid (which was a surprise) then rape the mum (remembering to put her knickers back on afterwards)then shout a lot and tie everyone else up with the most pathetically easy to get out of knot in movie history.

this was the first 20 minutes, the next hour was just more shouting, with a brief bit of nastiness near the end (they poke out one of the kids eyes with a spoon then set him on fire and stuff him in the oven) but the nastiness doesn't distract you from the knowledge that what your watching just isn't very good.

I wasn't shocked when it finished, I was just numb from the repetitiveness of it all. and pleased I didn't have to ever watch it again.

I first heard about this film in late summer/early autumn of last year. The director, Mr. Bressack, recently made this title available on VOD on his website. Having read many of the critical reviews which praised the film's realistic depiction, I wanted to check it out. I have to say that I was disappointed and hopefully these "critics" are not on a payroll somewhere.

The film is shot found footage style and has all the vertigo and nausea inducing shaking that accompanies that. Really, the shaking made me more sick to my stomach than the plot that was unfolding before my eyes. If you are a fan of the found footage genre, however, this may not cause you consternation.

The acting in this film is overboard. Some of the dialogue is cheesy to say the least. I'd say a good half of it is just expletives that seem to act as filler material. I'm not a fan of rape scenes, as I'm sure any person with a semi-normal psychological makeup isn't, but the ones in this film weren't so disturbing because the actress is clearly clothed during them. I understand why this is necessary from a filmmakers perspective but here it was quite obvious. Another rape scene in a bathroom contained dialogue and actions by one of the perpetrators that was simply baffling and the camera angle in that scene rendered it fairly ineffective.

The film is so overdone that it lost its "shock effect" on me about halfway through. Perhaps I'm a little more desensitized to violence due to having witnessed so much of it in my own life. I did not find this film to be as traumatic as some critics pointed out. The ultimate fate of the oldest boy was, quite frankly, insulting to the viewers intelligence. A couple of other things that were done to him weren't realistic either.

Mr. Bressack might have been better served to hire stunt professionals for these roles. I realize that he didn't want to hurt his actors but that caution hurt his film. The way this family was tied up was laughable and took away a lot of the terror aspect.

Some critics and reviewers have liken this film to a 70 minute version of the home invasion scene in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." I disagree. The scene in "Henry" is far more effective because it is relatively brief, has no exposition or back story, has the added benefits that shots before and after that scene were shot on film, while the scene itself was shot on video (making it appear all the more authentic), and implicates the viewer a voyeur along with Henry and Otis at the scene's conclusion. Hence, that scene is repulsive to most viewers and has the added dichotomy of coming 15 minutes after another murder scene where the viewers might not be so repulsed by the violence inflicted upon the sleazy, fat, obnoxious fence selling stolen goods.

I give Mr. Bresseck a little leeway since he is such a young filmmaker who in all likelihood has a promising career ahead of him. However, let us not forget that "Henry" was shot by a first-time director and I found that film to be far more effective at exposing viewers to violence as entertainment.

Mr. Bresseck included some footnotes at the end of his film that I felt were totally unnecessary. He could have simply allowed his film to speak for itself. It was a valiant effort on his behalf but I can only give 3/10. The director only spent about 3 minutes developing characters for this family and they weren't very likable ones at that. I just had a difficult time empathizing with them. Again, this probably has more to do with actual violence, both physical and sexual, that I've witnessed in my personal life and not simulated violence, which is quite evident in this picture.

Badly filmed. Shaky camera work. Not always clear what's happening. All the actors are terrible. Clearly the director didn't have a clue. Worst film I have ever seen. Dialogue can barely be understood as they were all talking shouting at the same time. Reminded me of a crowded pub. It's messy and in no way seamless. I am furious that I spent good money to watch it. It goes in for the kill in 5 minutes. Not enough time to know the characters. So didn't know what was getting done to who. The 3 attackers, well there are no words to describe how bad they were. He was obviously trying to be as good as Funny Games. If I were him I would stop making films. I actually have no words for how terrible this film is. You get the gist of what's happening and often the mind is much more brutal than the film, what you don't see is more disturbing (not in this case). He has even managed to eradicate that feeling you get when sounds are worse than the deed. The screen was too busy all the way through, making harder to decipher what was going on apart from the obvious stuff. If you want a decent film(s), try Eden Lake and Funny Games. If I owned this film on DVD I would burn it. I can't stress enough not to waste your time with this film. Truly, truly rubbish. I would also run out of space. Whoever sanctioned the release of this movie needs to retire, along with anyone else that took part in any way with the production. It's beyond rubbish.

You pretty much have a horror movie designed to look like a snuff film. This was like a really bad student film from a junior college. Looked up the director who is naturally the son of 2 people already in the entertainment industry (like how Jayden smith is an actor and how Lisa Rinna's daughters are both models!)

Let me give you an idea of some of the scenes.... 1. The youngest son is killed first. 2. One of the scumbags then rapes the mother and then has the other son have sex with her and then they kill the mother. 3. Another one of the scumbags plays mind games with the daughter that he isnt going to hurt her despite him making her remove most of her clothing (fortunately she stabs him) 4. One of them burns a swastika in the son's face and later removes his eye with them playing catch it it. They then stuff him in the oven killing him which didn't make sense since he was too large. 5. The dad is loose but gets killed (doesnt seem to have called the cops?) 6. Ends with a nice excerpt on hate crimes increasing

Only reason it is 2 stars is because it's short.

First of all IMDb rejects reviews that don't follow community guidelines, so I'm gonna have to hold out on going into detail over the scenes. Secondly, I won't be talking about the acting, my thoughts are on the content alone. This review will be unpopular because everyone here seems to be pretty good at stomaching a lot. To be honest I believed I was too until I was this film. Shotty acting or no, this it the most remorseless depraved thing I have ever seen and believe me I'm huge into the lost footage genre. I sat through all three August Underground movies, Megan is Missing, Zero Day, the Poughkeepsie Tapes, etc. And while they all disturbed me, none hit this hard.

I can't say what happens because if I describe a single scene, this review will be flagged and deleted. But we're seeing these unspeakable things happen to a mother, a father, and three children. An innocent family celebrating a young boys birthday. And then let me be as vague as possible. Three men break in and proceed to "have date night" with the kids' mom and go on to force him (A TEN YEAR OLD) to "partake" as well.. On his birthday... Here's where I'm going to come off as soft. Who would ever think of something so horrid? Oh and fiction or not, DON"T INVOLVE CHILDREN. Those child actors were literally assaulted in this film which wasn't fake. They're gonna be traumatized for the rest of their lives like other child actors who grow up and share their regret about making films like this. When I say child actors in this film are assaulted, I mean there are violent sexually explicit scenes where a ten year old actor is at least present in the room. Don't involve kids, end of story.

One scene that really bothered me was where after the father having seen his whole family violated in every way imaginable (including seeing his youngest child being put where you put cookies or a turkey) he gains the advantage momentarily and has a knife to one of the neo-Nazis' throats and you can just see and hear in his voice how traumatized and broken he is. Crying that he'll let the guy go if they just let him "see his little girl again" while the sick f's just scream what they're gonna do to her. A few seconds later they kill the dad. And these guys take one more hit of meth and head away Scott free. No justice for this family, nothing. We see in a caption at the end that the two guys were found, because they dropped the camera and someone found and reported it. They went to jail with life sentences. How is that not death? Even more depressing for you is a sad reminder of the American judicial system. Things like this happen, and the most horrible people get away. The girl was the only survivor in the family. It's captioned at the end how she was found in one of their basements, further violated, and is "currently adjusting to life without her family". That's just upsetting, like why did the movie above all else, need to add that?

At the end of the day, this movie violated every moral in and outside of the realm of fiction. It was supposedly created as some sort of PSA showing the severity of hate crimes. That's what they say, but I say this director is just a sick person with a sick mind. What we have here is something that was created to repulse and sadden the audience by showing them legitimately the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. I know it's just a movie and I know I sound like a.. "cat", but this was just too much. I don't know how there are people saying they enjoyed this. It was just torture p*rn. Anyone who enjoyed this needs therapy, because that's not something any rational person would want to see. As for those who stomached it.. Well you're stronger than I. Like I said I've made it through some bad ones, and I thought I could handle this stuff, but this one really got to me. Once I'm finished writing this I never wanna think about it again. This director has a history of breaking the moral fabric, and he seriously needs a legal ban from filmmaking. I could forgive a lot of this if it didn't involve three kids. This broke laws in real life, and as I'm sure you can tell by this long rant of a review, I'm angry and upset. I hope the director ends up in jail. This was everything that is horrible. And a ten year old was subjected to it. This was not okay dude. 0/10 Way too far..

I went into more detail here than I'd planned to. If this is flagged and removed I'll clean it up as much as I can.

My wife and I have been on a kick the last few months looking for the most uncomfortable films to watch. This movie showed up as recommended viewing from one platform or another and had a Red band trailer. Looked pretty good, so I read some reviews. I should have listened to them. What a waste of time! The camera work was so terrible it almost makes you dizzy, and the sound was pure garbage. I always have closed caption on and even that couldn't translate what the villains were trying to say, that says something! The scenes that were sopposed to be naughty were perfectly ruined with bad angles or just plain poor planning. The rape scenes were so timid as to be laughable. Thank goodness this movie was so short. I would like to point out that we are very tolerant of b movies and low budget, but what they created was weak, boring, and unacceptable.

Hate Crime is a wonderfully nasty little gem of exploitation goodness, and a breath of fresh air for horror fans who have grown weary of all the PG-13, CGI ghost/devil spooky kid movies of the past decade. Pitch shifters, boo faces, and jump scares might startle in the moment, but Hate Crime's very real world horrors will linger long after the film ends. The brutality starts about 2 minutes in and doesn't really let up for the entirety of the picture.

Hate Crime is a "found footage" movie, and while some may argue that this premise has run it's course, it's the perfect format for a project like this. A nice Jewish family has just moved into a new neighborhood, and is recording their youngest son's birthday party when a not so nice trio of neo-Nazis invades the home to try and scare them into moving back out. An unplanned act of violence quickly escalates the situation into something that can't be undone, and all hell really starts to break loose.

What proceeds is 70 minutes of beatings, burnings, mutilations, rape, and murders... all in your face and up close thanks to the first person vantage point that the "found footage" format provides. It gives the horrors an intimacy that wouldn't be possible from a traditional narrative, and makes the viewer almost complaisant in the affairs. The victims are so completely dehumanized that by the end one becomes almost numb to their plight, until the credits roll and you're painfully reminded the extent of what's been lost. Powerful stuff.

But it's not just exploitation (and it would be fine if that's all it was), there's also a message here. Hate Crime exposes the damage that hate has on not only the victims, but the victimizers as well. It shows the futility of an ideological stance based on emotion rather than reason, and how the poisons of bigotry and xenophobia are far more harmful than the perceived threat of the targets. Nobody "wins" in this movie. There are no happy endings. Hatred destroys everything and everyone. But it's message isn't preachy, and never gets in the way of the action.

The only reason I don't rate this movie a 10 is because of the lack of total nudity. I just don't think that people who rape and kill you would let you leave your bra on. This is a minor quibble and doesn't detract from the film effectiveness, but it needs to be pointed out. At the end of the day, Hate Crime is exactly what I'm looking for in a horror movie, and rightly earns it's place among the greats of extreme cinema.

@iamkrause