Plank Face

I got burned, you don't get burned. It's a 2016 horror movie. The acting is so amateur that you can see it as soon as you open the movie. Imdb rating is very high compared to this movie. In the movie, there are cannibals living in the forest, just like their counterparts. They are adopting someone. There is no limit to sexuality and nudity. I usually have incompatibility with Scandinavian films. I thought the movie was the movie of those regions, but it was American made. There was a similar mask in the movie cub - werb.

"Plank Face" is a strange horror movie that largely eschews scares and gore in favour of sex and nudity. It takes a run at doing something that I think is fairly unique, or would be, if it had been pulled off a little better.

For a "unique" film, it opens with stunningly familiar material, in which we see the bad guys kill some people. Slashers so often begin with this - think "Scream" and "Halloween". If that's not familiar enough, it even ticks off the most famous of the horror movie "rules": having sex gets you killed.

The movie then lurches into more unfamiliar territory, with a credit sequence that, unlike its opening scene, does not seem to belong to a typical slasher. We are introduced to the protagonist, a hipster-slash-outdoorsman, and his girlfriend, who are hiking through the woods. There, they run into another hipster-type, who chokes out the protagonist (in a fairly unrealistic scene). The protagonist comes to, and finds the other hipster raping his girlfriend. He promptly murders her.

None of this is as shocking as you'd expect; it just doesn't connect. It's handled unbelievably, and I think a large part is the pacing: this all happens before you know what's what.

Next, the young man is imprisoned by some yahoos who live out in the woods. First, they torture him by hammering a nail into his foot - which also seems pretty unrealistic as there's not enough blood or pain from the actor - and then they force him to eat offal.

Soon - much too soon, I might add - our hipster/outdoorsman is a happy member of the tribe, if that's what it is.

Throughout the ordeal he never loses his cover-boy sheen, as though the hut these people live in is actually on the beaches of Malibu. You would expect some kind of physical transformation to go with his caveman-like regression. You don't get it, unless you count the titular Plankface, and constant nakedness.

Why does the protagonist fall in line with these cannibal freaks so quickly? Was the part at the beginning with the rapist-hipster supposed to show that he had something caveman-like in his nature?

The plot of the film is different; the handling, unfortunately, is not different enough.

Thought it was a slasher/violence+horror movie. But guess not. Only the first few minutes of the movie had some killing/torture, then some when the movie is about to conclude. Everything was so kinky. Full frontal nudity from both male and females, graphic and disturbing sex scenes. Not so much to see. Just nude cannibals and graphic sex. Maybe that was what the movie wanted us to see. Pornography would be the best word to be used to describe this movie. Imagine you are a man and you have three females around you and one day they remove their clothes in front of you (not in this one). Don't know why the rating is so low, doesn't deserve all the hate. Not so many movies can be so graphic and sexually explicit like this one these days.

At the end of "Plank Face," my first reaction was a shrug and a "huh." That's because there was really nothing interesting, new, creative or particularly coherent to latch onto. There was lots of sex, but nothing titillating or sexy. Some gore, but nothing amazing or over the top. And the story itself used several horror tropes that have been used dozens of times already.

The version I watched was on ScreamBox, and it started off with an associate producer who also did costumes, makeup, acting, etc, talking about how much fun the cast and crew had making the film and how hard they worked and basically pleading PLEASE LIKE OUR MOVIE. This desperate cry for acceptance didn't sit well with me and set it up for failure in my eyes right off the bat. But I still tried to keep an open mind because there were enough positive reviews to make me curious. So here we go.

Enter young couple having sex on the hood of their car in the woods. In short order, they are axed to death by a guy in a wooden mask. Next scene, it's now daylight, and we see another young couple in the woods. The young man is attacked from behind by another guy who puts the sleeper hold on him until he finally conks out as a woman in a bunny mask watches from behind a tree. The boyfriend then awakes to see his girlfriend being raped by the guy. As the girl is fighting back, he slams her head on the ground and my assumption was she was unconscious, but maybe he killed her? Anyway, the boyfriend-instead of yelling stop or running toward his girlfriend currently being assaulted-he slowwwwly walks up behind the rapist with a really big rock and hits him over the head with it. This slightly stuns the rapist, and the boyfriend-again, instead of like, pulling the rapist off his girlfriend and seeing if she's okay-just kind of stands there staring at the rapist as he regains his concentration. The rapist then starts talking some kind of nonsense that I couldn't hear because the audio was too poor then the boyfriend takes the rapists' knife, plunges it up into where the sun don't shine and then slashes his throat. He then begins to walk off. SUDDENLY...

The boyfriend is waking up shirtless in a cabin bound and gagged. What?? Just like that. Complete change of everything without even the benefit of a fade-out. So far I'm not appreciating the skill of the editor. So bunny face girl is there with her mother along with the axe murderer in Scene 1. While those three start fooling around, boyfriend gets himself loose and escapes, but is caught by grandma, who speaks in a weird mountain language. I suspect she is Nell all grown.

Well let me Cliffs Notes this for you...boyfriend gets indoctrinated into their ways and replaces the axe murder who suddenly dies but we don't know how or why he just does.

I can't say I was crazy about this film. In trying to think of something positive, I give it a couple of points for the quality of the photography, although the audio was problematic. The special effects were fine, but not amazing.

Of the negatives, the acting was subpar, but in fairness, the actors had little to work with. The script-oh the script-what there was. There wasn't a lot of conversation or discussion. It was either Granny Nell's clucking, various screaming or the dialogue that was spoken was difficult to hear. And the editing absolutely high school level. The biggest issue I had were the gaping plot holes, lack of logic and no exposition at all. I had lots of questions. For instance: does anyone ever miss all these people who are dying in the woods? Cause they really seem to be killing a lot of people.

But, I did manage to make it all the way through. I got pretty bored early on and just really never cared about the protagonist. The best I can do is a 4.

If you follow any of Scott Schirmer's work, you will be familiar with a couple more effective titles, such as Found and Harvest Lake. These are examples where low-to-no budget can be great entertainment, if not just a bizarre experience to hold your attention. The questionable title aside, this one was great, all things considered. It's done on a very limited budget, but the heart is in it, the actors are giving 100% of their ability, and it just ends up working. The actors are comfortable in their skin and their ability to be fearless with the script really adds a lot to this premise. Even though it's hit and miss on what the Ellie Church posse comes up with, they put in the effort as independent film makers. Plank Face is not perfect. There's a lot of missing lore that would otherwise fill in many plot holes or plausibility acceptance (and would risk the runtime becoming too long), but I did enjoy this one without getting hung up on the details. The acting, direction, ending, and overall production made this one of the better ones in I/Low Budget category.