User Reviews

Initially, there was some thing to work with when hubby comes back from service and struggles with keeping things together while at the halloween hayride. But it quickly devolves into masked killing followed by 40 minutes of solid crying from the lead.

This movie was excruciatingly painful to sit through. Seriously, honestly, very cringeworthy. It had the potential to be really good, but failed to live up to that potential. The first thirty minutes weren't too bad. It was a good premise, but after the first thirty minutes, the storyline went downhill really fast. The rest of the movie was just the lead character Rose over acting and running around crying and hyperventilating. I've seen a lot of pretty bad movies, and after watching this one, I would gladly watch any of the other terrible movies I've seen again, before I ever watch this one again.

Sometimes a movie comes along that bucks the conventions of cinema in a good way. This is not one of them.

Things start off on a promising foot. Early on there are two outstanding jump scares, perfectly timed junctures of sound and image that should be studied by aspiring horror directors. The downhill slide soon follows.

Narrative means story, and the director of a narrative film's primary job is to tell one. Beyond that simple dictum lies plenty of room for creativity. And the director's toolbox is loaded with cinematic tools.

CInematography is the primary tool used to convey the details of the story. Whether the director made his own cinematic choices or gave the cinematographer free reign, the unorthodox camera angles and lighting are at times interesting from a photographic standpoint, but much more adept at drawing attention to themself than serving the story being told.

Underlit establishing shots, critical action taking place off camera, artily framed shots that only distract, do nothing to enhance the story and often create confusion. Rather than impress with their uniqueness they add to the tedium of a lightweight storyline stretched thin. Where close angles are needed we get wide shots. Or extreme partial close-ups that again are simply distracting in their self-consciousness.

There is virtually no character development of the protagonists and even less of the antagonists. Not much to care about. There are some effectively horrific bloody bits for the gore-lovers, mostly at the beginning and the end, between which is a long stretch where nothing much happens and when it does it often happens off camera.

If you're a photography buff and an involving story or crisp direction aren't important to you, you might like it.

Cinematography is static you literally will watch nothing for a few seconds , where the character left the screen then you are staring at nothing and the character come back then you get glimpse of the character doing something while being blocked by a huge prop.

Story is okay but not interesting, too many tension built up to nothing. 1 hour into the movie still nothing but tension, it's a very slow paced movie.

Horror... idk all i see is darkness with slight pop here and there of the murderer.

I felt like I was the one tied up in barbed wire just watching this flop. 90% crying from the main character, no one was likable and everything hurts just watching it. Flop flop flop.

Im sorry but this movie absolutely sucked... it would have more fun watching paint dry.

First off I couldn't get invested in the characters. The lead came off as irritating and the boyfriend? Well It's implied he has ptsd but even when he's not having his episodes of sweating while looking in the mirror he's just completely gone and seems like he's in another world. These two have no chemistry whatsoever even when they are getting along. Nobody seems to blend well with anybody i think that's the point but it's irritating. I just didn't feel interested in them and couldn't care less about either of them or what would happen to them.

This film starts and goes at a snail's pace and is very uneventful and i get it, they live boring lives and nothing happens where they live but did the audience need to be bored to death in the process with them? I swear i almost slipped into a coma due to lack of stimulus during this movie.

I get it was done to build up the suspense for the climatic ending but the ending is also very boring so it really doesn't work. All you've done is made a really boring movie with a boring ending.

By the time it gets to the fairground point we pretty much get shown what's going to happen and whose responsible so what the point of boring everybody to death for over an hour with nothing if that's how sloppy you introduce the bad guys ?? You could have just made a normal slasher film.

Obviously This isn't a masterpiece in film making history, its trying to make out its something but the plot is garbage and no matter how many dumb longshots of houses or fields you slap in trying to be artsy and edgy it's not going to save it. Its boring and dull and you aren't in film school anymore so cut it out.

I don't care about the point the director was trying to get across with this either. I'm not interested in the films message or bothered the meaning about the masks. I'm not interested because i'm not invested. For a solid hour or so i sat there bored off my face expecting this great twist coming up or something amazing as a payoff for the long boring time i had to endure the mess of a plot that i was made to watch and all i got was an ending that was cheesy and boring and i'm supposed to care about the directors little subtle nods are . Pffft please.

There's nothing smart or special about this film the plot is box standard and tbh pretty stupid. The characters are irritating and boring and editing and long wide shots are just as boring. And the final act is the most pathetic attempt at a horror/slasher/thriller or whatever they were trying to accomplish i've ever witnessed because the minute i saw the words "look" written on a wall in blood multiple times around a door frame with bloody arrows accompanying them pointing to the same door. I just lost it ...to make it worse she just follows the instructions and walks through the door like an idiot .i just gave up all hope trying to figure out what this movie was supposed trying to be. It honestly felt like something out of looney toons.

This movie clearly tries to be something it isn't. It tries to come across as artistic and deep or a new age kinda film but it's really just a bargain bin slasher film tarted up trying to fit in with the art crowd.

Avoid this!!! It's not deep or meaningful there is no unnerving feeling about it like it claims. Its boring and stale and unimaginative.

Good god - Why did they make this piece of garbage? It's so boring and slow paced, and the lead actress just cries throughout most of it. No substance whatsoever and just so annoying. I'd rather hang upside down in a boiling pit of acid for hours than watch this again.

The torture was mine, as I struggling to make it past the 1 hour mark without slipping into a coma. I finally gave up at 1:02. The pain was in watching each dreadfully boring scene linger... and linger... and linger. The misery was in realizing I had paid $5 to bore myself to the point of tears. But, if you really want to know the details so you don't think I'm just unfairly taking out my frustrations on this film by throwing vague insults...

The direction moved at a snails pace, or slower. And I wish I was exaggerating, but I am not. The dialogue was minimal and delivered with a total lack of enthusiasm by any of the actors. The camera work made things even worse. Long, slow still shots from weird angles or perspectives. There was no action, no character development, no witty dialogue, no suspense, nothing to make you care about anyone or anything in the film. Maybe something happens at the very end, I'll never know.

And, lastly, I understand this is a low budget film. I actually like low budget, independent films. But the problems in this movie had little to do with the budget. It really seemed like an intentional, stylistic choice. And that choice was a bad one.

Why in the world didn't she call the police ? It's not very believable. I couldn't get past how stupid Rose was. There were cars on the road in clear view. Run out into traffic and stop someone. Or better yet call the police !!! I found myself getting mad and screaming at the screen for her to call the police. Instead she runs around like an idiot sobbing. 🙄😒👎

I attended the world premiere of the new Blumhouse acquired independent film, "Hurt", last night at Fantasia film festival and Halloween-set film lovers are in for a treat. But not in a traditional way.

"Hurt" stars Emily van Raay in an attention grabbing feature film debut, with strong supporting turns from Andrew Creer, Stephanie Moran, and Bradley Hamilton.

Plot details can be found on IMDb, but plot details go like this: Tommy (Andrew Creer) returns home from war to his wife Rose (Emily van Raay), who lives in a house in the woods near to her sister Lily (Stephanie Moran), and her husband Mark (Bradley Hamilton). Almost every relationship on Rose's life is strained. On Halloween while attending an amusement park, Tommy has a break down thanks to the fake screams, blood and violence around him while he and Rose try to reconnect over nostalgia of the things they used to do. He takes off leaving Rose alone and from there the night turns to confusion and murder.

While the film has slasher tendencies and DNA, it's not a paint by numbers stalk and slash film. The story keeps its focus on broken characters, and real drama, but cleverly plays the dramatics into a plot about human interest in violence and our desensitization to it. There's layers to the film that will only hit you as you think about it afterwards.

It's actually heavily about violence without actually being overly violent itself, but doesn't shy away from gruesome and disturbing imagery. It's not about the slash, but the devastation in the aftermath and it feels like a punch to the gut. But "Hurt" doesn't revel in the suffering of it's protagonists, it wants to you to be disturbed by it.

The film also plays with themes of PTSD, and like Mallhi's previous films, focuses on characters with troubled minds. It makes for engaging tension. The film takes things slow, but deliberately so, and you never quite know which way it's going to go. Situations that seem crucial or obvious don't always pan out the way you think they will, but I won't say any more.

The gritty cinematography and perfect Halloween atmosphere lends itself nicely to the cruel vibe of the film. It's bleak both in it's themes and visuals with its desaturated colors and lingering shots. It all pairs nicely with the offbeat music by Tom Schraeder, that creates an unsettling vibe in conjunction with the almost voyeuristic style of the images. In fact I'd liken the sound design, and grainy texture of the cinematography to the documentary-like style of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There are some striking images and the use of minimal and natural light creates a real aesthetic.

If you like drama and character driven stories mixed with your horror there is a lot to admire here. "Hurt" is bleak and cruel and and it wants you to think about the sadism you came to see. In a time where viral videos are being shared across social media of real life violence, this film has something to say about the haunting lack of empathy people have when it comes to that violence, evident just by browsing through the comments sections of those viral videos, until it happens to you.

I really did think that before I saw Sonny Mallhi's latest thrill ride "Hurt". Ignore the bad reviews on this one... the trailer got me and for once, it's not better than the film.

Mallhi has a reputation as a love-em-or-hate-em horror maven. None of his films really "follow the rules"... a lot of his characters are quiet and unconventional (think his debut "Anguish"), and some are so downright insane they're alienating.

"Hurt" offers up a bare-bones classic slasher structure in a nicely doomy Halloween setting that stuns you and keeps you guessing with cool shape-shifting false fronts.

It's actually got more in common with some of the pioneering '70s slashers than you might care to admit or notice: a withdrawn, slightly sullen high school sweetheart Rose (played with grim realism by Emily Van Raay), traumatized back-from-war hero Tommy, (a simmering Andrew Creer), a minimal score, some inventive out-of-the-box editing, long brooding tracking shots, no real motives, kills that aren't extended blood fests.... Yeah, think 1978, not 1998.

But that's exactly why "Hurt" is so effective and unnerving, and unlike most anything in its horror subgenre that you've seen in 20 years or more. This isn't self-referential Scream-type stuff or gut-shredding Hostel butchery.

"Hurt" actually makes you work for your scares. It forces you to live the loneliness and alienation both Rose and Tommy have been tortured by and then feeds that vacancy into something quite sinister. Van Raay and Creer have a disturbing, unspoken casual chemistry that fills out the backstory that the script only hints at, and it's better that way.

The early scene around the picnic table where Tommy and Rose talk, smoke, and drink with Rose's sister and husband is shot not with coverage but in a series of quick, oblique edits: mouths moving, hands gesturing, but few (if any) shots of eyes or complete faces. It's flashy, but not enough to be distracting. These characters want to talk; they don't really care what it's about, and they really don't want to "see".

Mallhi isn't afraid to let the camera linger on eerie just-out-of-frame tableaus either, as when Rose half sleeps, half works at a convenience store counter while the camera slowly pans over to a security camera, with... hey, WTF IS that exactly?

The low-key, slightly sardonic tone of the film is really what carries it and us through to the (while not wholly original) neatly shocking conclusion.

Again, there are a lot of shout-outs to past Bertino films, like the LOOK graffiti from Mockingbird and the Strangers-esque masks in the cable knock-off Rose is channel surfing through, but "Hurt" is really in a category all its own: a horror movie that dares to go a bit deeper, into an unknown that offers no feel-good escape from the traumas of real life.

I'm not sure when people just started rating things 1 or 10, but it's lazy at best. At least put some effort into things.

Is this the best Halloween movie ever? No. Is it a 1/10, like so many reviews claim? Also no. I start all movies at neutral 5 and go from there. The worse or better a movie gets, I go from there. Most get 6/10, +1, or slight positive. The only legit 1/10 I've given is some Russian Halloween garbage movie, ESCAPE ROOM something or other (NOT that Escape Room). Go watch that garbage and see what a 1/10 truly means.

Anyways, a fantastic open that introduced me to Deepest Blue, which alone was worth it. That and Come 2 Me (Halloween Ends) are songs that elevated their movies therein. And these 2 will be this year's stand out Halloween flicks.

Could have definitely utilized the PTSD angle better. I figured things were going 1 of 2 ways, and I'd have preferred what I thought would be going down as the slow burn reveal of the true horror of the night's events are revealed in the admittedly stretched out final 30 mins. This certainly isn't your Hollywood ending and there's really no Joy to be found here. There is only...Hurt (sry, had to do it).

Could have cut 10 mins out for a tighter beast, particularly the last 30 mins. There are many lingering shots of chickens, skies, etc. Personally I am fine with the scenic ambience and a "slow burn" but clearly im in the minority. And yes, too many teeth shots. Also, when you're within visible shot of an active highway, maybe think better on your options in such a situation. This could have been a 7 or more but for its flaws, hence the 6/10.

I love stupid movies and halloween, but this was punishment. My wife found it on Amazon Prime (I usually avoid their content) and said lets watch it. These people should never be allowed to make another movie. There's no plot, you don't see the gore until the end, the acting is awful, the only tension is when you are screaming "hurry up and kill her so the movie can end. The protagonist, if you can call her that, spends half the movie running around doing about the dumbest things she can and the antagonist makes zero sense, isn't fun, isn't scary, isn't threatening, and definitely isn't interesting. Please, please, do not waste your time with it. I'm still pissed that she made me watch it.

It was a boring advertisement for, Saunders Halloween Park and 4ever 20 shirts. The acting was horrible. The character barely cried for her husband, she slept, drank juice, nothing really going on. I thought the main character, rose, was the killer due to her lack of compassion and tearless screams for her loved ones. I mean who leaves their friend tied up in barbwire, mangled up, bleeding to death to only call out for help 2km away from a busy highway? Someone who doesn't care that's who.

Don't waste your time on this movie. Very slow. Very boring. Long quiet camera shots of nothing. Wish I had chosen a different movie to see, this one is not it.

It's sad because all that expense went into such a piece of garbage. It's was as if you gave a bunch of elementary school kids cameras and equipment and said..."go make a movie!" I guess when you think you are a film student, act like a film student and have access to equipment yet have zero brains and absolutely no concept of...well, anything, this is the workmanship. Hope at least the food was good.

Tip: for any Gravitas Ventures movie you have about a 10% chance that you'll make it through the whole film. Interestingly each GV movie is terrible in its own special way. This particular movie has slow lingering scenes that are meant to be artsy but actually just cover up the fact that this movie is completely dumb and worthless.

Who let this get made!?! Probably a drug dealer who needed to launder some money. I fast forwarded after 45 minutes and cheered when the main character died. It would have been a lot cooler of the husband came back and was actually a ghost just wanting to spend one last night with his wife then make a zombie baby! But no. It was 91 minutes of following around the idiot wife, call her husband, look out the window, smoke a cigarette, call her sister and sleep. My bowel movements have more excitement than this movie did. Probably more blood as well. Please don't waste your time watching this crap movie.

Everyone that loves horror movies can appreciate even B rated horror films for their efforts. This movie had a lot of potential, as far as their "gore" is concerned... And the storyline would be way cooler if they had casted a better Rose (main female character), and excited REALER emotions from the characters.

If you like watching an extreme close up of a female fake crying (never any tears), and constantly whimpering, and screaming annoyingly for over an hour ; then this is the film for you! That was probably the #1 thing that turned me from rating this higher. If she hadn't of faked cried though the whole thing I would've enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, she's beautiful and has nice teeth... but acting in a horror movie? Naaaaah... sorry I couldn't rate this higher.

Why do we like to be scared? Or seek out horror imagery? And enjoy watching fictional violence? Not everyone does, sure, but us horror fans do.

I went in seeing Sonny Mallhi's Hurt fairly blind. This was the world premiere and there was no trailer, and the descriptions were vague. A few pictures, of people wearing masks. Just enough to grab my interest. The masks looked creepy. The less known about the premise, the better, as the first act culminates in a sly use of misperception, playing with our expectations. This is ultimately what director Sonny Mallhi manipulates throughout the entire film: our perception.

The continuing set-up remains unconventional, as we are led to follow a number of characters until eventually settling on who will be our main protagonist (who is also revealed as someone who is not what they initially appear to be, in a creepy scene all done in close-ups). Soon enough, things are confirmed (after the first act tease) : we are in slasher-film territory. But things are not that simple, or standard.

At first, the style is reminiscent of the ''mumblecore'' type of filmmaking (handheld camerawork, sometimes unfocused, naturalistic lighting), but this is also part of the misdirection. The framing turns out to be very deliberate, showing us what Mallhi wants to when he wants to, both to give or keep information and to create the mood that he's going for. The pacing is slow and focuses on our main characters (of which there are very few) in a realistic and intimate way. Slowly, this starts to create an uneasy, subtly dreadful feeling.

Eventually, this becomes a stalk-and -slash film, with emphasis on the stalking. We've seen this type of thing many times before, but not quite like this. On the surface, it has more in common with classics like ''Black Christmas (1974)'' and ''Halloween (1978)'' than the more typical slasher film, with the emphasis on mood and suspense rather than multiple kills and gore, but then the genius of its intention is revealed. We think we know what's going on, but...

It's impressive how Mallhi ultimately tells his story. It's also impressive that he manages to do what most films of the genre are supposed to and usually try: to actually be scary, and with a story that's deceptively straightforward and that we've basically seen many times before. Or so we think. The ultimate subversion of our expectations, carefully and patiently constructed throughout, is at once genius and simple.

There's a meta analysis of our relationship with horror at the core of Hurt, which is Mallhi's whole point. Not necessarily horror movies per se, but our desire to be scared and to scare. As such, deciding to set the story on Halloween is perfect, and it's one of the best uses of the holiday I've ever seen in a horror film; not just in the way to make the surroundings and visuals scarier (the design of the masks is terrific) but also to help explore its themes. There is a lengthy sequence taking place in a haunt fair that turns out to be crucial is so many ways to both the events following it and their meaning.

As it turns out, this unconventionally-shot, familiar story is interested in asking big questions. Its structure is brilliant. Its subject fascinatingly explored. Its conclusion incredibly satisfying. It's also immensely helped by its lead performances (especially Emily van Raay) which are completely believable.

One of the biggest surprises I've recently seen coming from the genre. Sonny Mallhi sticks a mirror in its intended audience's face, while giving us exactly what we crave.

A horror movie rooted in character and story, Hurt stands out as a really great film. With characters that stand out in depth and story that adds a great amount of depth, combined with classic horror movie styles and themes that make it both fun to watch and interesting to examine.

Attended the premier at the Fantasia Film Festival. Movie was well thought out, kept me on my toes which is atypical for any movie especially a Horror Movie. The cinematography was well done as well, however it played just slightly long. Either way it had a great tempo and few twists. The lead had a House of Targ short on the entire time which was cool. Go see the movie and you won't fall asleep!

Brilliant movie that has you fall in love with its main character-Emily Van Raay in a breakout performance-before gutting you. It stays with you: I went in for the thrill and then spent days thinking through the horror of what I saw.