Scrapbook

Now this.....what can i say about this? I have seen A LOT of ultra-disturbing exploitive horror films in my day, but WOW. This one was a headtrip. The only other thing I have seen Emily Haack in was "I Spit On Your Corpse, I Piss On Your Grave"(which quite frankly sucked, and so does 9/10 of all the other I Spit On Your Grave rehashes), and though the material in this film was similar (extremely graphic violence and rape scenes), it was EXTREMELY well done. And I'm not sure if that's a GOOD thing or a BAD thing. This movie makes you ponder whether or not you're going to burn in Hell just for watching it. But that is a true sign of a great horror director! If anything, if you're ever babysitting a 5 year old bratty kid who just won't shut up no matter what you do, then tie him to a chair and make him watch this movie. He won't say a word....EVER again! If you're into underground extreme horror, then by ALL MEANS, buy this movie.

What a waste of time and money this overrated piece of crap was.

I was pretty excited to see this movie. Most of the reviews I read on the independent horror websites made it sound like it was a new violent and disturbing classic. While it does go out of it's way to be offensive, it fails on every level. The acting and directing is what one would expect from a backyard home video and that kills any chance of getting behind the cardboard characters.

This movie is not below the level of an Ed Wood film like Shatter Dead, Nikos the Impaler or countless other backyard horror videos but it's also no where near the classic that the independent horror websites would have you believe.

Scrapbooking, a hobby that has increased in popularity in recent years, is, according to Wikipedia, 'a method for preserving a legacy of written history in the form of photographs, printed media, and memorabilia contained in decorated albums'. In Scrapbook, a low budget indie horror from director Eric Stanze, serial-killer Leonard (Tommy Biondo) blends polaroids, news cuttings and handwritten journals from his victims to produce a detailed account of his career as a killer: a scrapbook twelve years in the making and a labour of love which he hopes will one day make him famous.

Leonard has only one more victim to document until his project is complete: Clara (Emily Haack), a chubby bird with a very bad haircut. He subjects her to days upon days of degradation, rape and violence, whilst forcing her to add her comments to his sick journal. But Clara plans to survive her ordeal, and plays mind games with her captor, until, one day, she turns the tables on him and wreaks revenge.

Now I've watched a fair amount of 'underground' horror in my time, and witnessed all sorts of celluloid depravity, but in my opinion Stanze's Scrapbook goes just that bit further than most in an effort to shock. A nasty, misogynistic catalogue of torture, it seems that this movie's purpose is to offend, and in that it definitely succeeds. Use it as a yardstick to measure your tolerance to disturbing imagery, but don't ever call it art.

Biondo spends 95 minutes abusing Haack's character in every manner possible, with no detail spared by Stanze's camera. Haack, an 'actress' with obviously no shame, willingly degrades herself at every opportunity; exactly what makes someone want to perform such acts on film, I shall never know.

I tried to view this film as an intense study of psychotic behaviour (ala Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), but Biondi's Leonard is so OTT, he is hard to take seriously. I tried to view it as a hard-edged 'rape/revenge' movie, in which the viewers sense of satisfaction at witnessing the victim's ultimate retribution justifies earlier scenes of violence—but the payoff is too weak to qualify it as such. And its story and level of acting is not good enough to make it a truly gripping tale about survival against the odds. In the end, I accepted it for what it really is: an effectively repugnant little movie designed purely to illicit a reaction—good or bad—from those who watch it.

Wow, what a disappointment. After watching the director's ICE FROM THE SUN, I thought I'd give this one a shot. If you've ever seen ICE FROM THE SUN, feel free to laugh up your sleeve at my naiveté for thinking this one would be even better. SCRAPBOOK is a truly awful pseudo-movie, all the more stunningly awful because the mise-en-scene at least indicates that a modicum of talent resides behind the camera. Tommy Biondo, who "wrote" the "script", plays a serial killer who keeps a scrapbook of all the women he tortures and kills. Why? It's never made clear. He kidnaps a girl and tells her that she must maintain an account of her torture in the scrapbook. Why? It's never made clear. The killer has a deep-seated resentment of women, and is sexually maladjusted. Why? It's never made clear. As a matter of fact, the only thing that's clear from this stupid movie is the filmmakers' desire to "make something really disturbing"; their miserable failure comes from the fact that without subtext, scenes of violence and torture are simply demoralizing, not to mention boring. Maybe the film could've at least been uncomfortable to watch, but all the torture sequences -- the film's bread and butter -- are so ineffectively staged that all their violence is rendered completely useless. The acting in this movie is so bad: how hard could it possibly be to act out blinding pain? The girl in this movie is so stupid; through the whole thing, she simply cries and whimpers, rolls up into a little ball, says "Please" a lot. I'm not ordinarily the type to watch a movie and say, "If I were there, I'd do this...", but in this case we're talking about a dumb weepy girl who isn't even tied half the time, and through all the rape and debasement, never once a raised hand, never a kick, not even a cross word! I know girls who would eat this psycho-killer prick for breakfast. I'm not the sort of person who thinks that gore and graphic sex disqualify a film from greatness. I just find it insulting that this movie is intended to be "thought-provoking". The only thought it provoked in me was "What an idiot I was for spending $25 on this horse-s__t." If you want to see a truly disturbing and thought-provoking horror film that has a point beyond the lovingly-detailed (and poorly rendered) torture of a severely stupid young woman, watch IN A GLASS CAGE, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE, or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (that's right, even LAST HOUSE wasn't this bad). Some people here have called SCRAPBOOK offensive and nauseating; I'd argue that this is giving the "film"-makers too much credit. SCRAPBOOK is stupid, boring, and pointless; I wouldn't even do the cast and crew the favor of getting sick at this stupid, boring, and pointless movie. I could go on and on about how terrible it is, but just see for yourself. If you found this movie stimulating, I have three words for you: READ A BOOK!

It's true: this movie is disturbing and will shock you with some scenes of depravity and torture that you've never seen before, but despite all that it's still just not very good. Among my main complaints: - Some people extol the fact that the production quality was very low, giving it a grim "snuff" film look to the movie. But seriously, I thought it just made every scene look that much worse because of the image quality, shaky camera movements, and muffled sounds.

• The acting, though pretty good at times (the female lead whose name I forget must've gone through hell to make this movie) is still suspect throughout much of the movie. They try hard but in the end... it's just not very good.

• The special effect. I know a movie with such a small budget can't be expected to have Hollywoood quality special effects, but seriously, a lot of the corpses and body parts looked like discarded parts from Halloween costumes.

The premise of the movie was great but the execution was just bad. Blame it on the small budget, the neophyte actors, or whatever, but in the end it boils down to this movie just not being very good. There are much better, scarier, gorier, "shock-ier" movies out there. Don't get taken in by the hype.