Resurrection County

As a fan of Redneck Torture Porn, I became aware a long time ago of the narrow range within which the plot lines of nearly all movies of this type fall. A group of good looking young people venture into the backwoods, typically in the South, looking for adventure -- in this case, ATV riding. They stop for gas, a couple of them mumble some insulting remarks that are picked up on by the locals and then drive off to find a detour where there is never, ever cell phone coverage. "Resurrection County" is no different in many ways. But in others, it is quite watchable. The actors who play the locals are quit believable and a event relatively early in the story was so unexpected that it took my breath away. That scene in itself is worth the price of a Redbox rental. Critics who complain that there isn't a lot new here need to get a life. What did you expect?... for a pretty city girl to go off and marry an in-bred townie? Give this one a chance.

The first thing I noticed about the film was its promo image. It's effective: it's both brutal and spooky. Turns out is not an image from the film. The film's two female stars are a long-haired brunette and a short-haired redhead (the latter seems to be channeling Susan Ruttan for some bizarre reason... maybe someone was a huge fan of LA Law?). There are scenes that are highly similar to the image, though.

The major premise of this movie is that the main characters go off to the woods to ride their ATVs. They are going mudding, basically. It's a movie about rural people who happen to have some disposable income versus rural folks who are dirt poor and insanely violent from extreme politics. They are the type of bad guy that actually exists in this world, unlike ghosts and werewolves and genius serial killers and so forth. Normal rural people are also included in this movie, most dramatically in a law enforcement officer who demonstrates professionalism and tolerance. There are also some morally ambiguous characters to varying degrees. But the people who are villains are hardcore evil. For example, there are at least three attempted victims of nonconsensual sexual activity. But the filmmakers avoid showing anything except the violence,

The biggest problem with the film is that there's something off about the pacing. Most films have something to hook you and then a lead up to a flurry of activity. This one has big things happen, a conspicuously long gap in the middle where they added characters and nothing is really happening, and finally things happening again.

In all, it was maybe a slightly above average film, but it has nothing that's a must-see.

Going through rural Arkansas for a camping trip, a group of friends inadvertently offend the locals with their disregard for local laws and are forced to defend themselves from their murderous intentions as they try to get away alive.

This is about as cliché and predictable as it can get in the genre, and there's really no surprises at all in this one. It goes through the predictable notion of the civilized city people running afoul of the inbred rednecks and then getting turned on for their actions, which makes sense in some regard about whether or not to mess with the locals, but the fact that it's been done so much and so often really doesn't leave any room for originality left in this particular scene and that puts this one through the motions of ignoring their warnings, getting caught in the fray, getting captured and tortured only to fight back in the end as the survivors try to escape, and this has been done so many times recently it's rather hard to get interested in this one due to being so close to a lot of other types of films. What also hurts this one is the fact that, regardless of the familiarity here, it's nearly impossible to get invested when the people here are gigantic, colossal morons who really have no business surviving for the blatant, utterly nonsensical scenes which start off the furor against everyone as that tends to be so cliché and lifeless that making us want to be around them is really hard to accomplish. That said, there's a nice level of brutality that runs throughout this one as the tortures inflicted are shockingly brutal and twisted, all the more so for the fact that it seems entirely possible people like them came up with such a series of scenes to accomplish this, and that leaves a high blood-splatter throughout which is quite fun. As well, the final half is easily the best with a strong series of chases and encounters that tends to really get some involvement going in their quest for survival and race to escape, and that makes for some intense times there. It's enough to rise it up slightly, but there's still too much wrong on a philosophical standpoint to help this one.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity and attempted rape.

So I was in the mood to watch a stereotypical bad horror movie and I settled on this due to decent reviews. I was very surprised mostly by how realistic the villains were in this one. They are more like people that we have met or even know rather than your run-of-the-mill typical inbred stupid rednecks you tend to see in these movies. This movie sets up the norm and then has an early (edge of your seat disturbing) scene in the first quarter and then kind of dies out a bit before gearing back up again. I was surprised at the character left standing but I saw the ending coming a mile away. Maybe I've just seen too many of these movies.

The acting and effects are believable. The story is pretty realistic (most of the time.) I was going to give 6 stars but I gave it 7 because it was on my mind for a couple days after watching it. I personally enjoyed this movie.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was not about torture, but an unusually deranged family who were violent in some original and creative ways inspired by Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. The film is an incomparable and timeless cinematic masterpiece which culminates in a terrifyingly bizarre dinner party.

This film conversely, is the typical overdone torture porn movie - the only similarity being the kids encounter rednecks in the country - with that empty don't-need-a-reason attitude. A perfect demonstration of how torture flicks don't belong in the horror genre due to their general omission of anything scary or creative - only unimaginative meaningless torture.

I couldn't finish watching Resurrection County. Mainly because it was disturbing in a most unoriginal way. And also because the script and interaction between characters was shallow and unbelievable. And it was just too boring.