Suspended Animation

While traveling to fish in a frozen lake with two friends, the director of animated movie Thomas Kempton (Alex McArthur) loses his backpack and returns alone seeking it in the track. However, he has an accident with his vehicle and asks for help to two locals, the insane cannibalistic sisters Vanessa Boulette (Laura Esterman) and Ann Boulette (Sage Allen), and he is abducted by them. Later their friends kill Ann and rescues Thomas, but they are chased by Vanessa in her snowmobile. After an avalanche, Vanessa is considered dead by the law enforcement, but Thomas becomes obsessed by her life, tracking down her daughter Clara Hansen (Maria Cina), who was adopted when she was six and does not know her origins. Thomas gets close to Clara trying to disclose her past and gets involved to a dramatic family situation.

"Suspended Animation", a.k.a. "Mayhem", is a very weird B-movie, since it begins in a suspenseful situation that recalls 'Misery", shifts to a heavy drama and has a very unfair conclusion. I liked the unknown cast: Laura Esterman and Sage Allen are great in the role of the two deranged sisters, showing a stupendous black humor in the beginning of the story while telling Thomas what would happen to him. Maria Cina is very beautiful and has a top-notch performance in her dramatic role. I felt sorry for the unfair fate of her character and I did not like the selfish lead character, capable of jeopardizing the life of another person to save his own. This movie could be a little shorter, but anyway it is underrated in IMDb. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Mutilados" ("Mutilated")

What struck me was the remarkable similarity of Fred McArthur-who played animator Tom Kempton-to Gene Kelly both in looks and voice. Its a typical film of today's horror genre where everything is thrown in and you get the impression they never knew how to end it. The cannibal theme was quite interesting but rather pointless as we only saw a pair of women who talked about it.Kemton,by this time tied to a wheelchair and pleading to be set free,suddenly found himself minus a finger as one of the mad sisters chopped it off.Later when he was rescued by his snowmmobiling buddies who'd gone ahead of him,the finger was "reattached" with sticking plaster though you had to assume he later went to a hospital. Placing Kempton there in the first place was the stock plot of going to the house for help after he crashed his machine Here though is where the story began to go haywire as the animator makes a film based on the mad sisters-he'd previously promised to put them in the movies if they let him go!! Next up comes a meeting with a woman who turns out to be the adopted daughter of the youngest sister-she agrees to be a model for Kempton's next production.She in turn has a son who gives insanity a bad meaning and hes suspected of being a serial killer when Kempton discovers a pile of rings presumably trophies kept from his victims. Its not really that frightening when you think of what happens in real life but if you watch this movie don't blink too much or you may lose the plot! The ending was the kind thats been used over and over again-the villains are presumably killed but still keep coming back.we have the landrover which gets bogged down in the mud-as a variation to being unable to start-and you think no way would Gene Kelly have played in a film like this-he would probably have found it difficult keeping up with the plot!

I could not sleep so I turned on the TV and this seemed to be the only movie that got my attention, at first, it seems that the movie will end after few torture scenes or what so ever but there are huge twists in the history that makes this film remarkably good besides not having an unique history it does make itself unique.

There are some actual stuff related to cannibalism such as it being heriditary and other sick stuff, the movie explores some bit of it but I didn't like so much how they introduced and put the history together, there seemed to lack an excuse to the main character be there and doing what he was actually doing.

Despite it's bad reviews, it's a worthy and interesting movie to watch and it develops very well along the theme.

With little knowledge or context, I was happily surprised by this film! It's thoroughly engaging, and I would agree with some other reviewers in that this film is fairly effective exceeding expectation and throwing in a good handful of unexpected twists & turns. Some of the negative reviews are surprising and seem quite ridiculous as this is flagrantly far from being the worst film ever made. Obviously it's not high high art, but that clearly isn't the intention. If ultimately you want something that entertains and engages, which seems to my problem as of late (in that entertainment isn't that entertaining these days)! This is a well done thriller. Enjoy!

I watched this movie with little to no expectations and was very surprised at how much I enjoyed it. There is such creepy dark humor within the script that you laugh as you cringe. A crusty tale of backwoods cannibals, how can that be anything but entertaining? As if the sisters weren't bad enough, when the boy enters the picture we are treated to yet another level of twisted heredity. Fred Meyers as Sanders is probably the most disgusting personification of "The Bad Teen" I have ever seen. Those zits!

Thomas Kempton's last line is the perfect end to the numerous horror flicks we have all seen. Why won't they just die?!