Cornered!

In Los Angeles, a serial-killer with unknown identity is slaughtering clients in convenience stores. The steals the surveillance tapes and the police department has offered a US$ 500,000.00 reward for him.

In a trashy convenience store, the owner Steve (Eduardo Antonio Garcia), his clients Mona (Ellia English) that works with phone sex and the whore Jess (Elizabeth Nicole), his employee Donny Donut (Peter Story) and his junky nephew Jimmy (James Duval) discuss with the carrier Morty (Steve Guttenberg) what they would do with the serial-killer if they capture him.

Morty goes away and Steve invites the group to play a poker game, with Jimmy is affected by the forced abstinence. Out of the blue, they are attacked by a masked killer during a night of terror.

"Cornered!" is an unpleasant and stupid low-budget film with fake reviews promoting it. The uninteresting and dull story has lowlife characters and never holds the attention of the viewer. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Brutal! A Face do Demônio" ("Brutal! – The Face of the Demon")

Cornered! Treats slasher fans like they're morons.

First off, whoever authored this DVD does not know movies. There's a trailer for THIS VERY movie in the previews. Spoiler alert! You don't put the trailer for the movie you're about to watch right before the movie.

A bunch of misfits barricade themselves up in a store with a serial killer on the loose.

The only thing good about this movie is the killer's methods (and the twist on how he obtains this information). This filmmaker has chosen to spell it out for you, not once (once would be too much), but TWICE! The Dumb Decision trope is in full effect in this one, and I think it costs every last character their lives.

Ok, every horror movie has a skeptic. They play the skeptic trope to the Nth degree with Steve, the store owner. He's not just skeptical, he's 100% CLUELESS. You'd think this was a parody, but I'm pretty sure this is a straight-up slasher (even with the presence of Steve Guttenberg). People say alarming things to him, and he just mumbles to himself. He follows a blood trail to the basement that he is convinced is a prank done with ketchup. Two survivors find the keys to leave the store, and... the way this all plays out is too ridiculous to even go into. You can watch it for yourself if you have a masochistic streak. I don't know how much dumber Daniel Maze and Darrin Grimwood could have written these characters.

Yeah, Steve Guttenberg appears at the beginning and the end of this movie. So, if anyone needs their Police Academy fix.

Cornered! (2009)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pretty bad slasher flick about a serial killer stalking convenient stores in Los Angeles. A store owner and his friends sit down to have a poker game after hours one night and sure enough, the killer shows up and starts to pick them off one by one. There are countless direct-to-DVD horror releases out there so you have to pick them with caution but I decided to give this one a go since Steve Guttenberg has a small part. I'm sure those who grew up watching POLICE ACADEMY wondered what he was up to in his recent movies and this here was my shot of seeing him again but it frankly wasn't worth the trouble. This screenplay is without question one of the strangest I've seen because it features a lot of bums and the reason for this is beyond me. We have the store owner who is obviously a cheap, rude jerk. We have his nephew who runs the cash register and just happens to be a meth head. We've got a prostitute trying to pick up some extra cash. We have one lady who works as a phone sex operator. We even have an overweight guy hooked on donuts. Umm....what the hell? Have we really gotten to the point in horror films where one of the characters needs to be addicted to donuts? I'm not sure if this was meant to be part of the humor but the laughs certainly never work and this is painfully obvious in a scene early one where another bum, this time a homeless man, tries to steal some alcohol. I'm really not sure what the point of this comedy was but it certainly doesn't work but then again neither does the horror or mystery aspects. The killer was rather obvious within the first five minutes so the entire mystery gets flushed right down the toilet. With the comedy and mystery gone you'd think we'd at least get some gory deaths, right? Well, wrong. The violence for the most part is rather tame and the bloodiest scene is actually a quick edit to part of a jelly donut dripping onto a table. The performances in the film were fair and that includes Guttenberg who at least proves he still has some nice comic timing. With that said, CORNERED! is a low-budget slasher film that doesn't work on any level and should certainly be skipped.

Being a hardened, jaded horror buff this reviewer was tired of seeing a bunch of clichéd, attractive teens with the personality of a thrift store being killed over and over by the same kind of stalker. Along came Cornered! and I must say that I'm glad that I didn't listen to all the negative feedback on this site.

A group of real people are trapped in a liquor store after a killer breaks in and begins stalking them. This killer has an odd penchant for murdering convenience store clerks and the like before stealing the security footage and watching his own handy work.

The pace is what scared a lot of people off and it does tend to be a little slower than one would hope for. But it's just a minor complaint as the rest of the cast performs quite well, the villain is interesting, and it held my attention for eighty-two minutes. And wasn't it nice to see Steve Guttenberg again?

Five people play poker after hours in the upstairs of a liquor store, only to be picked off one by one by a serial killer. Much of the first half is centred around this game, frankly very boring. The acting isn't great, especially Duval as the heroin addict going cold turkey. The temptation to hit the FFWD button was great. Once the killing starts there is an attempt, with some success, to substitute gore for tension. Many slasher fans will feel short changed however, with only one killing near the end producing the gory goods. I guess making a film in pretty much a single location takes skill, so credit to them for trying. Could've been better, I'd pretty much lost interest after the first half.