The Culling

Let me start by saying I understand the collaborative nature of the film-making process. When a movie is particularly well made, the accolades go mostly to the actors and directors, while the scores of set and costume designers, lighting technicians, and sound editors go largely unrecognized. When a movie is well made, fans quote it endlessly, it rakes in cash at the box office, and people remember it for years or even decades. When a movie is well made, it introduces memorable characters the audience can identify with because they see a part of their own personality being played out on the screen.

The Culling is not a well made movie.

There is nothing relatable or even recognizable as natural human behavior present in any of the characters. The acting is stiff and wooden across the board. The dialogue sounds as if it were written by a 12-year-old Juggalo. The only thing more prevalent in the script than plot holes, loose ends, and red herrings is the question mark at the end of every other sentence.

I have sat through some terrible films. I have seen Mark Wahlberg pant his confused way through "The Happening." I have seen three-foot-tall trolls fart on each other for interminable spans of time in "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie." I have seen a topless woman in a gorilla mask wordlessly rob a man at gunpoint, stealing only a horribly disfigured fetus floating in a jar in 1997's "Hideous!" The Culling is the worst movie I have ever seen. Avoid it at all costs.

The friends Tyler (Jeremy Sumpter), Emily (Elizabeth Di Prinzio), Sean (Brett Davern), Hank (Chris Coy) and Amanda (Linsey Godfrey) are traveling to a music festival. They arrive late at a dinner that is closed and find the girl Lucy (Harley Graham) in the parking area. Lucy claims that she is lost and the group decides to driver her farmhouse. They meet her parents Val (Virginia Williams) and Wayne (Johnathon Schaech) that invite the group to have dinner with them. Val cuts her leg with an ax and Wayne takes her to the hospital while the group of friends stay in the house taking care of Lucy. Soon they discover that the place is evil and try to flee. Will they succeed?

"The Culling" is a terrible horror movie full of clichés and senseless situations. Amanda is sensitive and feels evil in the house but stay there, even when the table moves by itself. Emily's attention to Lucy is unbelievable considering that she is traveling with friends and behind their schedule. The conclusion is a total mess. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "A Casa Maligna" ("The Evil House")

I'm going to try and avoid repeating what most other reviewers have said since I agree with the majority of the negative comments. That being said, this movie should NOT have sucked as badly as it did. The production values were decent. The cinematography was decent. The general dialog between the five main characters was reasonable and believable. The actresses were attractive, well-spoken and not terrible actors. The male actors were mostly not terrible.

So why did this thing suck so badly? The editing was problematic as was obvious by the shortened film length. I suspect a fair amount was cut as what did appear was choppy and not very cohesive. However, while I think the directing was weak the worst thing about the movie was the script. It's unusual to find even a bad B-movie with as unbelievable and contrived story line as what ran through this dog. Even stoned/intoxicated people don't do as many stupid things as these nitwits did.

In fact, I have to admit to being rather shocked that within the first 10 minutes or so the main actors were doing things that a 10 year old wouldn't do in the same circumstances. Despite being grossly disappointed I soldiered on hoping that each unbelievable screw-up would be the last. Now I'm embarrassed to admit that I finished it.

Nonetheless, this could have been a decent, scary flick if it even had the slightest lick of a story. But it didn't. There is no story here and nothing to see except a couple of pretty young actresses scarring their film resume by having their name on this garbage. Don't waste your time folks. You will be left feeling like an idiot because you watched the entire thing. This dog won't hunt...EVER!

UPDATE: 14/02/17 Update: I HATE SHILLS!!! Since I wrote this review several more, ahem, "Sparkling" reviews have appeared. This film is still VERY BAD!!! Please don't say no one warned you!!! Good Luck!

-The Culling (2015) movie review -The Culling is yet another indie-horror flick that follows a group of students who get trapped at a creepy house and creepy stuff happens. As usual.

-In a word? Generic.

-The story is generic, cliché, and nothing was new or even presented in an original fashion.

-The film took forever to take off and never got that good.

-The acting is nothing special.

-The characters literally are just the horror clichés minus a black guy who dies first.

-The music was generic creepy music.

-The effects were B-grade effects and there was nothing in the effects, film quality, or anything else what was impressive. The Culling is a generic movie with a generic plot, generic characters, and generic genericness. It offers nothing new to the genera in any way, and nothing works because of it. The Culling is not worth seeing. ever.

-Easiest review ever.

I am sad to have to advise my fellow horror nerds to stay clear of The Culling. This is another horrid low-budget attempt at making a generic horror film of very poor quality on many levels. It is actually quite cringe-worthy. The Culling primarily looks remarkably cheap and suffers from amateur cinematography at its worst; it really does look like a High School project due for a C-, and this is if the teacher was very, very kind. The acting and the behaviour of the characters reveal the awful writing and the cheesy/terrible directing from Rustam Branaman. The plot-setup isn't worth much either; it has been seen countless times: a group of friends go for a drive, then they have to stop at a remote location, etc. The plot is just taken from other horror movies and is completely uninspired and bland. And the execution actually tested my patience. The Culling drives each and every stereotypical character home like it was created to fit the generic pattern from the 70's: the Christian, non-alcoholic virgin is the good one, the marijuana smoker is somehow violent and obnoxious, the pushy drinker-boyfriend tries to pressure the good virgin to stray from her obvious Christian path, and her unchaste friend is just messed up. The whole problem with this particular generic type of friend-group isn't the fact that it is too basic, but that it hasn't got the actors who can act the parts in a convincing manner. Stay clear!