Sutures

Sienna, stuck in a hospital bed regales her interviewer with her tale of how she ended up there. Months earlier, her and her friends are vacationing in a charming isolated castle not realizing that a enigmatic man is following them in the hopes of harvesting their organs to sell on the black market. There more to it, but that's the general gist.

The acting is sub-par but in this genre on this budget that's easier to overlook. Something i can't though is the story which is haphazardly sutured together. Granted this seems to be more of a deliberate decision than general sloppiness, but this doesn't make the movie any easier to digest. Couple this with a nonthreatening Gothic type bad guy and a nonsensical 'twist' ending and you're left with a movie that's simply not the sum of its parts.

My Grade: D+

Eye Candy: Kate French (?) gets topless

I was one of the investors behind this movie and I am proud of how it turned out. 5 stars. This movie has all the twists and turns that keep the movie goer on the edge of their seat. The set up for the movie is as good as it gets. As a reviewer said. "I am about to recommend a torture porn movie. I am like a lot of fans, I am so sick of gore and torture that is meaningless. And a big percentage of low budget movies use this in the place of a script and character development. As a horror fan, you just get sick of being cheapened by companies and films that just give you nonstop killing that you don't know who is being killed or why you should care. Sutures, is torture porn. But, it builds the characters, and tells a great story and even shares a lengthy back-story into the victims and the victimizers. You understand the motives of capturing people and selling their organs or using them to save a patient. The movie had a few scenes that I felt were ingenious, in terms of torture. The closer this movie got to the end, the more it started to lose steam. The first hour, I felt were good, not the best or worst but good. The last twenty minutes, is where the movie started to try to hurry to the finish line. Try to get everything in before the credits. I felt if the movie was 10-15 mins longer and slowed down a bit, it would have been so much more effective. This is from Tammi Sutton, who produced Dead and Rotting, what a fun movie that was. Its not boring, nor does it ever drag. It just needed more time. But, I liked it and can say I would watch it again."

Was drawn into seeing 'Sutures' with a cool poster/cover, an slightly intriguing but very derivative premise and as someone with a general appreciation for horror. That it was low-budget, which from frequent personal experience is rarely a good sign due to that there are so many poor ones out there, made me though apprehensive.

'Sutures' is sadly however yet another film seen recently, hence some reiteration because the exact same strengths and flaws those films are present here, that to me was incredibly disappointing considering its potential which it doesn't do anywhere near enough with. As a film it's weak, with a plethora of problems (huge ones too) and doesn't do enough with its potential, which was hardly small. There is very little good about it

Lets start with the positives. The scenery is atmospheric and spooky.

Although most of it looks schlocky, some of the shots look decent. The start intrigues somewhat, shame the rest of the film completely goes downhill and never recovers.

Unfortunately, the story does feel paper thin, disjointed and over-stretched and some of it feels vague, under-explained in the last third where the film especially became duller, more predictable, more senseless and less scary. Too many characters are too sketchy and with nowhere near enough to make one want to endear to them. Their annoying and illogical decision making and behaviours frustrates.

Making the film feel bland and forgettable with not enough heart put into it. The effects are ropy at best, the sound quality is obvious and utilised cheaply (being too loud in the build ups and people's reactions) and it's best not mentioning the uniformly lumbering and histrionic acting.

Dialogue can be stilted and rambling, with lots of clichés and no depth whatsoever, while the pace goes to a standstill very quickly and drags on forever with very little going on worth caring about, never recovering. Found too many the supposedly shocking moments not surprising or scary and the supposedly creepy atmosphere dreary, due to the excessive obviousness, a lot of dumb and vague moments and explanations and the lack of tension and suspense. Would not have minded the lack of originality (the film is extremely derivative and in a dumbed and watered down way) if the story and atmosphere were at least alright in execution, in reality they were both dreadfully done. Not to mention a whole novel's worth of inconsistencies and continuity errors and a structure so jumpy and confused it renders some of the film incoherent.

There are a good deal of underdeveloped plot elements and often nonsensical and confusing character motivations, while too many of the things to make you jump or shocked are far from creative or scary and are pretty tame. The ending can be seen from miles away and has a twist so ludicrous that the viewer's intelligence is insulted.

There is not enough threat here and what there is of it tends to be used poorly, it is completely unimaginative, very repetitive and more odd than creepy, completely failing to show any sense of horror and resorting to cheap typical horror tropes. Some badly sagging momentum too. The direction is leaden, inexperience seems to be all over the film, and the music doesn't really fit. Lets not get started on the far from creative and shaking the head worthy kills and especially the gratuitous and cheap-looking gore.

Overall, weak. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Although that the idea of this flick was rather good I had a few problems watching it. First of all it clocks in at 83 minutes but mine, being bought at a horror convention clocked in at 76 minutes. Or something is wrong here on the database or my copy did cut out the gore?

But not alone that enigma is a problem it's the way the story is being told that makes it almost not watchable. It starts off rather good and we do follow the escaping girl but once the flashbacks come in this flick turns into a mess. It's hard to follow what's happening because we have flashbacks in flashbacks and by doing so you are losing the interest in the characters.

For what I have seen, heavily cut it looked like it contained a bit of gore here and there but it do has another problem. While watching it my children in the room asked me if I had to turn up the volume that loud and I must say I had too because the audio track is a horror itself. You need to raise the volume to understand what the conversation was all about. In fact, the acting was not convincing too.

So for me, some parts must have been interesting to watch but still it's a mediocre flick.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

STITCHES is another boring rip-off of the whole HOSTEL/SAW shebang and another unwelcome addition to the 'torture porn' category of film-making. This one sees a typically clichéd group of attractive young things end up in the hands of some decidedly nefarious business people working in the illegal organ donation industry.

The entire film is merely an excuse for extended and gratuitous scenes of unpleasant torture and bloodshed. Subsequently, the whole of the soundtrack is either full of ominous music or people screaming at the tops of their lungs. It's quickly wearying, and I can imagine that few people would get a kick out of such a spectacle. I found the attempts at cod psychology to be rather laughable, while the interesting cast members are limited to just two: old-timer Andrew Prine (AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION) as the villain, and B-movie stalwart Jason London as a cop.