About JE Smith
Location: Irving, Texas
Occupation: Freelance
Bio: JE Smith, aka Jeff S., is a forty-something guy who was born in Illinois, but has been living in the wilds of Dallas, Texas for almost twenty years. He has been a movie nut ever since seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes at Steeleville Theater in 1971 and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Ultraman, Star Trek, The X Files, Batman, Spider-Man, Doc Savage and many other pop culture icons. For fifteen years (1981 - 1996) he published the sf/horror filmzine Wet Paint, and tried his hand at self-publishing his own comics with Bulletproof (1999, 3 issues) and Complex City (2000 - 2003, 4 issues and a trade paperback), both of which bombed. He's been writing film reviews for almost thirty years and is just getting the hang of it. Married to the lovely Barbara for over 15 years, and owned by a sleepy cat named Max.
Posts: 178
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Pointless, artless, remorseless brutality. And not in a good way.
Not that I would ever expect truth in advertising, but the box art for Carver would have you believe that the film is notorious for it’s over-the-top violence, and especially one particular gag, “the most horrific scene in horror film history!” Instead, it’s just the same old teeth-on-edge torture porn, and a virtual scene-by-scene remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because, y’know, we’ve never seen that before. As for that “notorious” scene, let’s get it out of the way right here and now: a guy gets one of his gonads squeezed by a pair of pliers until it explodes, CG blood gooshing onto the virtual camera lens. Yes, it’s gross, yes it’s likely to make any guy cringe. But revolutionary or noteworthy? Not so much. And the scene in which it occurs is so perfunctory and suspense-free that ending it with a pop is the only way it can generate any response at all. Maybe if this weren’t such a pale, lifeless retread of so many other films, it might have a chance for greater impact, but, unsurprisingly, this is not the case.
A band of personality-challenged young adults (Matt Carmody, Kristyn Green, Neil Kubath, Ursula Taherian, Jonathan Rockett) are road-tripping in an old van when they stop in a rural area to camp out, and come across a family (well, two brothers anyway – the Carver family, git it?) of in-bred yokels who have systematically been murdering folk in various brutal ways. The “hook” is that they film the murders (with a 16mm camera that somehow magically produces Super-8 film stock) in all their grisly glory. The kids come across this stash of kill films and think them to be simple fiction until they start becoming movie stars themselves. And believe me, it sounds more interesting than it actually is.
Director Franklin Guerrero, Jr. (The 8th Plague) claims, in the audio commentary, that he wrote the script in two weeks, but you’ll be hard-pressed to figure out why it took him more than two hours. Patterned closely after Chainsaw – as so many movies are – there’s not a single original thought in this entire flick, and far more energy and attention seems to have been put into finding painful ways for people to be tortured and die than to any kind of rational/coherent/interesting storyline.
The characterization is at the level of “nice guy” “slutty girl” “loudmouth” “geeky brother” and “bookish girl.” Which is to say, none at all. These characters aren’t just under-developed, they’re mere walking blood bags, which serve no other function than to be punctured. And, cinematically speaking of course, people this stupid deserve to die. Just a thought, but if you want to make something that’s basically a snuff film, wouldn’t you be helping your own cause by making us care whether these pretty folk live or die? Would actually empathizing with them help generate suspense? This lesson has been lost on a whole generation of filmmakers – or maybe that’s the point. The only way we can enjoy torture porn is to hate those being killed? Doesn’t sound like much of a thesis to me. It never ceases to amaze me how little thought goes into these productions, and how many of them get made. Why are the killers doing what they do? “Because they’re backward-ass country retards” is apparently enough of an explanation. For this old timer, torture porn is a pretty useless sub-genre. Seeing somebody pound five-inch nails through a woman’s kneecaps is not my idea of fun. I’m not sure why it’s anybody’s idea of fun. I’ve been a horror film fan my entire life, but somewhere along the way we crossed a line, and this descent into pointless, artless, remorseless brutality is a depressing and unsavory development, with no end in sight. Sure, Chainsaw was unrelenting, but it also had a brooding ambiance and a sense of style, morbid though it may have been. Plus, it was the progenitor, and you always get points for being the first.
Unlike some other entries into this genre, Carver is not completely without some display of filmmaking talent, but it’s wasted on this stupid, stupid script. Guerrero might want to consider getting other people to pen his movies, as he doesn’t completely suck as director, like he does as a writer. At least Carver doesn’t skimp on the gore, which is plentiful and sticky, especially in this “unrated” edition. The Fangoria crowd will love it, but anyone who requires even a modicum of substance to their terror tales is warned to stay away.
Special features include a “behind the scenes” featurette that is slightly more expansive than these things tend to be, a handful of dull deleted scenes (including an only-slightly “alternate” ending), plus trailers for Carver and other horror flicks. There are two mind-numbing audio commentaries, the first a misguidedly self-congratulatory track with Guerrero and producer Richard Finney, and a second with Guerrero again, and another producer, Eric Williford. This one has slightly less back-slapping, and the boys seem to be growing ever more inebriated as it rolls along. Neither is worth a listen.
Granted, Carver is an easy whipping dog for the ills of the torture porn sub-genre, but it still pissed me off to no end. Obviously there’s a market for these easily-cranked-out quickies, but that doesn’t mean I have to endorse it. If t.p. is your thing, Carver at least delivers the gooey gore, poppin’ balls and all. But it’s still a mighty depressing way to lose ninety minutes of your life.
