Scrapbook

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.

I had no expectations, good or bad, about Scrapbook before seeing it. Nor was I acquainted with the low-budget horror team headed by director Eric Stanze and the volume of straight-to-video films they've produced. What I sat through was a third-rate, tasteless, and throughout borderline cheesy exploitation – the tasteless aspect probably being the film's only strong point. This one takes its graphic sex scenes to where others have only hinted at. I admire the fact that the filmmakers were willing to 'go there,' to push the envelope, to shock the viewer without restraint, but there are so many negative points to the film that its cinematic chutzpah is all but extinguished by them. Contrived, I think, would be the best way to describe how most of the scenes come off. There are only a few moments when the dialogue reaches a stage of believability, as the rest is addled and poorly delivered with bad timing. The violence is on par with wrestling entertainment (WWE) – in particular the weak slapping. There are so many ludicrous moments that I can't begin to explain – the prologue being the utmost example of it. There's a glass bottle scene that screams I Spit on Your Grave (1978). Was this homage?

The gore, however, is done quite professionally. It's something most exploitation horror film afficionados will want to see at least once. In a nutshell, it's 95 min of killer and victim pornographic fair.

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.

The only points I can give this film are for lead actress Emily Haack. She must have gone through hell making this.

Actor/writer Tommy Biondo, on the other hand, fails at doing everything vaguely movie-related. Nothing good can be said of his writing, because there just doesn't seem to be any writing beyond "in this movie I get to rape a girl." There is some rubbish about the titular scrapbook, which just ends up a half-forgotten plot device for most of the film.

Nothing good can be said of Biondo's acting, either; he delivers middle-school-level improv lines (which I'm sure he thinks are super-scary serial-killer lines) with all the menace of a rubber ducky.

The so-called "violence" is at a Three Stooges level of laughability, with none of the charm. He lightly pats his victims on the face, and despite said victim acting dutifully like they've been slapped by a bodybuilder, it is about as believable as third-rate WWE fights.

The very fact that a slim, squeaky, bandy-armed man with the physical intimidation factor of a stalk of celery is supposed to be able to kidnap, beat up, and rape a woman who looks about three times as strong as him, and later beat a big strong farmer twice his size to death, defies any attempt at suspension of disbelief. This man couldn't physically kidnap a sandwich.

The poor actress suffers though badly-done rape scene after badly-done rape scene, a scene of non-simulated fellatio, and a scene of actually being urinated on, by a bad actor and worse writer who seems to be on a sad wish-fulfillment trip that has no business calling itself a horror film, or even any kind of film.

If you're into horror, get another horror movie. If you're into porn, get another porn movie. This film fails entirely at being either. Hopefully it won't leave too dark a mark on the resume' of Ms Haack, who comes out of this whole sorry mess as the only one with any sort of talent whatsoever.

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!