Kruel

Dear lord Ben has the most dreary voice in history Jo overacts The mother is a cow Don't waste your time

If you haven't seen this film before, you've seen one like it. There is a lunatic at large, and he is driving an ice cream van. A young boy disappears and is believed drowned accidentally, although his body is not found. The police may believe this, and his parents, but his nanny knows better. Unfortunately she is the one the child's mother especially holds responsible because instead of watching her charge she'd been in a lengthy discussion/argument with her boyfriend who'd confessed to having it off with someone else.

Trying desperately to win her back he panders to her claims of foul play, the two find and break into the ice cream man's home, hoping to find what exactly? Then the bad guy reappears. To cut a long story short, he murders the boyfriend and kidnaps her. Well, it would have been a very short film if he'd murdered them both. Surprise, surprise, he is not simply a lunatic in the evil sense but delusional, because he thinks he can take her boyfriend's place.

That's about all you need to know. What happens next is fairly conventional but not totally predictable. What makes it so tedious is the long goodbye which is played out from the damsel's hospital bed. On the bright side, the soundtrack could have been a lot worse.

I think too often people confuse horror with slasher. Now, I am all about a nice Friday the 13th marathon, or the original Texas Chainsaw massacre, or even Halloween (1978 version), but these are not so much horror as slasher films. I think the distinction is important before one even begins to determine how they feel about a movie. All that being said, I'm still not sure this fits into the horror category. There are a few scary moments and a lot of drama but for a low budget movie, this has some very solid moments. I would have preferred less talking and more action but overall I liked the story.

I get that some people hate it; somebody always hates a film, song, TV show, play, book etc, while others think it is great. This is definitely not great but it is certainly worth a watch if you have the right expectations.

This movie is as much a relationship movie as anything else: Between Jo (the main character) and her boyfriend and her mom and dad. Horror movie? I'm laughing right now so there's your answer.

After breaking up with her boyfriend when he confesses something to her (The road to disaster is oft times paved with "good intentions", Reader. Dude should have kept his pie hole shut.) and refusing any and all attempts at communications from him, Jo later has an encounter with an ice cream vendor on wheels with a weird painted-on face. She later suspects him of committing a terrible crime facilitated by her negligence. She and her ex-boyfriend go sleuthing (she reluctantly) to see if they can find something on this guy who knows she's been snooping around and decides to target her. The constables don't believe anything she tells them (Surprise!) and have already decided they know what happened.

If you have nothing better to do, this movie is best viewed at home in your underwear scratching your-- (Okay, I'm not going there). Point is, it's a "TV" movie about relationships with mild suspense (yawn) provide by the ice cream guy at the end. Needless to say, this movie was not "my cup of tea" as the saying goes. No interesting dialog, no interesting action, no senseless nudity...... Er, speaking of "senseless nudity", I think I'll go browse my video library. Love, Boloxxxi

Robert Henderson's "Kruel" is a psychological thriller with hints of horror in one intensely drawn nightmare. Unfortunately though, It is a horror film without any horror. Yeah I know that that statement is argumentative considering the subject matter, but I didn't feel that "Kruel" had enough horror genre elements to be classified as a real horror movie.

Now the story that Henderson has devised is captivating and deals with some very horrific realities of society. There is an antagonist that is creepy and nightmarish as all get out. The acting and direction that Robert Henderson takes with this film is stellar on almost all levels of story telling. It is dark, emotional, and often insanely intense. However the story stays in very dramatic, suspense thriller areas where character development and scene building reach a fevered pitch but never deliver any real heat.

The special effects aren't really present in this "horror" film through 98% of the movie. It is all melodrama, high emotion dialog, and really cool scene transitions that combine with some very retro horror designed sounds. Only there is no real horror present. Everything stays suggestive or just not approached. Which sucks because had Henderson thrown in some noticeable giallo styled gore or graphic violence, then "Kruel" could have been a breakaway hit. Unfortunately everything stays pretty PG-13. There is one singe boob shot and one moment of gushing blood, but that comes "too little too late" for me personally.

Overall I have to say that "Kruel" is going to disappoint almost all horror fans going into this film expecting anything other than a really emotional, dramatic story. As I have said-there is no real horror here. The subject matter is horrific, the drama is intense and the story is well written. It is all just a bit "Lifetime Movie Network Adjacent". I got the same experience while watching this film that I have gotten mistakenly watching a few of the church produced "horror films". Still the acting and story are pretty nice. Just wish that the film was marketed as psychological thriller or dramatic thriller, instead of Horror thriller.