Director: The Mo Brothers (Kimo Stamboel, Timo Tjahjanto)
Year: 2009
Country: Singapore/Indonesia
Alternate Titles: Rumah Darah
Genre: Psychos
Plot:
Working in a family-owned restaurant, a pregnant woman trying to make ends meet on her own find her and her friends forced to entertain a bizarre feast with a stranger and her psychotic mother who plan to turn them into a cannibalistic feast and must find a way to get away alive.
Review:
For the most part, this was quite the enjoyable effort. One of the more entertaining efforts to this one is the fact that there's a wholly engaging and stylish setup that offers a lot to really like. Mainly based around the sense of sympathy offered from the initial set of circumstances surrounding meeting her where the pregnancy ordeal and how she's treated by her family members makes for quite an endearing manner of getting us to sympathize in this situation. Adding that onto the way in which they get wrapped up in the family's escapades as well as the rather fine sense of calmness that overcomes her with the others, there's a really nice setup in the first half for the craziness to follow.
That feature in the film, where it starts getting fun in the second half once the family starts in on their plans. Once it gets pass the dinner party and the spiked food and drink, the initial stages of them hunting the group down and striking at them has some really tense and chilling moments, especially once the creepiness comes in with their creepy smiling as they go about their slashing and cornering the group. With several stalking scenes throughout the house leading to barricading themselves in various rooms or encountering the demented butchering of the group by chainsaw, stabbing or slicing up the body with various knives and cooking utensils.
That it turns the tables on the family in a nice turn of events, getting free of their bonds and getting the upper-hand for the time-being, enough to escape from the house and land outside where it focuses on some more fun with the escape turning into more of a survivalist stalking film coupled with the antics inside the house involving the birth of the baby in the midst of the chaos and their attempts at getting to those left alive as they begin stalking and killing everyone. With all sorts of gory mayhem unleashed here, including a chainsaw decapitation, a series of knife slices on the arms and face, a deep stabbing in the stomach that spills plenty of blood and a brutal slit-throat alongside the rather enjoyable bloodshed from the non-lethal wounds which produce a nice amount of bloodshed as well as these manage to hold the film up over it's few minor flaws.
Among the few minor flaws to be featured here is the fact that this one severely loses steam in the last half. There's a decided lack of tension in what happens once the second group of investors arrives and brings about the new slaughter in that it feels like a complete rip on everything that's happened before which is far less exciting to see play out. Although that includes some rather fine moments of brutality with plenty of bloodshed, it all just feels like more of the same and causes the film to go on way longer than it really should, another fatal aspect of this one. Alongside some rather cheap and cheesy-looking effects, these here are what hold it back.
Overview: *** 1/2/5
Despite a few problematic areas that are quite troubling and detrimental, for the most part this was still incredibly fun and hard plenty to handily recommend about it. Give this a chance if you're willing to look past the flaws or are curious about Asian horror beyond the ghost films, while those who can't take them seriously are advised to seek caution.
Comments
Post a Comment