don s
An unconventional horror movie that is much more psychological than physical, which will turn many viewers off. There is little onscreen violence and very little blood and gore. The acting is decent and the story is believable. I had hoped that Olesya Rulin had a bigger role but you can't have everything I guess. Worth a look.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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A Thousand Cuts (Charles Evered, 2012)
A Thousand Cuts suffers from what seems to me to be an increasing problem in Hollywood that appeared around the same time we started importing a slew of Asian horror films for the domestic market-that would be around 1998, when Ringu hit it so big. It got to the point where every genre flick that came over from Asia, whether it was on Tartan Asia Extreme, Bloody Disgusting, or any of the dozens of other distributors who have worked tirelessly to bring Asian cinema to our doorsteps (and for that I thank them, even if by this time we're getting a dozen Grotesques for every Booth that comes down the line), was marketed as a horror movie. A lot of them weren't, but when they got marketed as such, people went into them with certain expectations. If you sit down with Rampo Noir expecting to see yet another movie like The Grudge, you are bound to be sorely disappointed, even if Rampo Noir is a dozen times better than The Grudge AND all of its sequels and knockoffs combined. But the movies still rented like hotcakes...so American filmmakers started jumping on the bandwagon. "Is there any kind of supernatural element to this movie? Hey, we'll call it a horror film!" The classic American example is William Friedkin's brilliant talk-piece Bug, based on a Tracy Letts play. It flopped so badly in America that no one was willing to release it on DVD for years...and when it finally did come out for the American home video market, the movie was such a smash hit in other countries that it was still playing on the big screen all those years later. Why? Because it got marketed as what it is-an intelligent, cerebral talk-piece that has everything to do with the mental states of its two main characters rather than the sci-fi elements that got so played-up here. Bug isn't a Michael Bay flick, but everyone went looking for one.
And here we have A Thousand Cuts, and everything from the cover art to the title tells you that this movie is torture porn. And so pretty much everyone who saw it, the few of us who did (as I write this, the movie has just over five hundred votes on IMDB, whereas the usual no-budget horror flick available on Netflix Instant can usually clear two thousand in a matter of weeks), went into it expecting yet another Saw ripoff. A Thousand Cuts is anything but-like Bug, it is a slow, cerebral, mostly intelligent thriller that is entirely lacking in the gore department. A true disappointment for those looking for scantily-clad scream queens being taken apart by inventive instruments that could have been designed by Stephen Lack's mad character in Dead Ringers. But for about three-quarters of its length, it is pretty bloody perfect if you happen to be a fan of movies like Bug, or my favorite Asian-mismarketing whipping boy, Su-yeon Lee's 4 Inyong Shiktak, released in America as The Uninvited, one of the best movies I've ever seen and about as bloody far from a horror movie as it's possible to be and still contain a ghost. And A Thousand Cuts holds up to those rather lofty comparisons most of the time-and when it doesn't, the movie doesn't completely blow it; the ending could have been far, far worse than it was.
Plot: Lance (In the Flesh's Michael A. Newcomer) is America's newest it-boy, a big-time director whose latest horror film was an unexpected smash. (Sound familiar? It should; they could have called the first twenty minutes of this movie The Eli Roth Story.) We open at a lavish party in Lance's backyard. He's not the world's nicest guy, but Evered (Adopt a Sailor), who also wrote, is sure to let us know that the guy isn't just a complete jerk; he's probably not a bad guy when he's not entirely stressed out. The party comes to an abrupt halt after the power goes out briefly and comes back on to showcase a photo; we know nothing, yet, but Lance is obviously shaken, and orders everyone out. Soon enough, an electrician named Frank (Frozen River's Michael O'Keefe) shows up to check out the lights...and reveal the mystery behind the photograph. This leads us to the bulk of the movie, which takes place in Lance's living room as Frank confronts Lance, trying to make him justify the violence in his movies.
Does that sound like torture porn to you? Nah, I didn't think so. I mentioned above that Evered drops the ball in the movie's final bits (the last 15-20 minutes of the movie); without being spoilery, I'll say that there is something Frank hints at throughout the entire conversation that would have been better off left offscreen (and to the viewer's imagination). But even so, since Evered HAD to go there, he at least did so in a way that embarrassed neither himself nor the movie. SO while it ends up not being nearly the movie it could have been had it stayed as strong in the final quarter as it was in the opening three, it's still well worth your time, and not at all what you think it's going to be. ***
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
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Audience Member
A Thousand Cuts is essentially a home-invasion film about the director of a successful horror series called A Thousand Cuts. A copycat killer re-enacted scenes from his film on a young woman, and now her father is seeking vengeance on the director. While the premise is somewhat interesting, the film just ends up being tedious and making us wish we were watching the fictional film A Thousand Cuts instead of the actual one.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
First time in a long time that I just skipped through a movie. Blech.
Yo, gimme all dat candy tho.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
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