Amusement - Giochi pericolosi

While driving in a side road following a truck with her boyfriend Rob (Tad Hilgenbrink), there is a strange accident and Shelby (Laura Breckenridge) is abducted by a deranged driver. Tabitha (Katheryn Winnick) is kidnapped from her uncle's house by a man dressed of clown. Lisa (Jessica Lucas) is caught in an old pension by a twisted man. The three women are former school friends from Briar Hills and sooner they find themselves in an underground prison; further, they discover that the abductor is a former school mate that had psychological problems and is seeking revenge against them.

The plot of "Amusement" is so unreasonable (actually absurd) that irritates. The first segment (Shelby) is dumb with unexplained attitudes that do not make sense. For example, who is the girl in the truck; why she writes a note asking for help and jumps from the truck immediately after? Who would chase a truck with a dangerous kidnapper in the middle of nowhere leaving the girlfriend and a wounded girl behind on the secondary road? Why the truck driver runs over Rob? Why did he stop in a creepy house if he was close to the gas station? Tabitha's segment is the best and slightly inspired in the 1979 "When a Stranger Calls", but uses the bad clichés with the woman running from a backyard to a closed space and finding the body of the babysitter. Lisa's segment is also terrible, and who would sneak in a frightening place after the disappearance of her best friend Cat and her boyfriend Dan inside the house? The annoying and insane criminal is not developed and the viewer never knows how he got the isolated underground facility and why the psychiatrist of Briar Hills would visit a patient in a visibly abandoned spot. Last but not the least, the re-creation of the art boxes by the maniac is simply ridiculous. The good points of this flick are the cinematography and the acting, but that is not enough to save the story. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Diversão Macabra" ("Macabre Diversion")

I get that this was released more than 10 years ago and maybe the actresses were not "big" back then, but in 2019 Katheryn Winnick is a pretty well known name and Jessica Lucas altough less known has grown a fanbase for her portrayal of Tabatha in Gotham.

I was interested to see a slasher flick with these ladies. So thats why i chose this movie in my 2019 Halloween program. Turn out the movie is really not good, i am being generous with a 4 to be honest. First its one of those movies with "substories", as you follow one character for a while then another, it can work at times but in this movie i think it didn't and it could had been better presented. The gore/violence is also pretty low. Some things are just not explained and make little sense.

If you want a better indy slasher flick with creepy environements in an unsettling fashion, give a look at Terrifier.

This instantly forgettable piece of generic, modern horror sees a giggling psycho (known as The Laugh) wreaking revenge on three beautiful young women who, years before, failed to find his school project—a diorama featuring a mutilated rat—as amusing as he had hoped.

The film opens in an innovative enough manner, with each girl's abduction being shown as a 'story within a story', but soon descends into mediocrity as the focus of the plot becomes the standard woman in peril garbage that we have seen countless times before. To make matters worse, director John Simpson's visuals suffer from the grimy 'torture porn' look and feel that is all the rage these days, and Jake Wade Wall's script is packed with so many plot holes, clichés, and dumb characters that taking the film seriously is very hard indeed.

Admittedly, Simpson does manage to create quite a bit of tense atmosphere during one effective section of the film involving a room full of creepy toy clowns, but the premise is hardly original, and one does have to question how a killer in a creepy clown costume can enter a house completely unnoticed.

Thank heavens for the presence of hottie Katheryn Winnick (the lovely renaissance slut from Satan's Little Helper) as lead victim Tabitha, for without her as diverting eye-candy, Amusement would have been a whole lot more difficult to endure.

I wasn't amused with "Amusement".The laughable synopsis on the cover goes like that: Tabitha,Shelby and Lisa.They're longtime friends on separate life paths.But they share a horrific destination when a seemingly innocent incident from their school days comes back to terrify them.Someone wants payback:warped vengeance...mind-games vengeance...taunting,shredding,slashing vengeance.Inside a stone-walled chamber of prison cells and mechanisms of doom,the three women and other victims face a fierce fight to survive."Amusement" is terrible.With dumb plot and zero scares it offers nothing even remotely interesting even for seasoned horror fan.The killer is an underdeveloped cliché with truly annoying laugh.There is only one effectively creepy scene in which the emerging female lead is confronted with a room stuffed with dolls and clowns.The violence is tame so gorehounds and slasher fans will be disappointed.4 out of 10.

AMUSEMENT tells the story of three women who are stalked by a psychopathic friend from their childhood who has a murderous sense of humor.

The movie was actually shot well, and at least in outline the story could intrigue because of its unusual structure. So there was potential here, but black hole-sized plotholes ruined the movie.

Let's forget about how a mental case released from psychiatric hospital can gather the financial resources to pull off all the outlandish things shown in the movie. Or how he can apparently carry out tasks that would take some time literally in seconds. Or how he can fall of a down a long shaft and survive without major injuries.

No, this movie takes stupid character syndrome to heights unseen, like past the event horizon of those aforementioned black plotholes.

Guy notices two people in the backseat, covered in fabric and bound up, but moving and making noises, only after he finishes his car trip? Check!

Girl has a phone on her while looking for her disappeared housemate and her lover inside a super creepy house, but never bothers to call the police? Check!

Girl manages to subdue the villain momentarily but then runs away instead of finishing him off? Check!

The movie ends with one of the cringiest voice over narrations I have ever heard, which includes this diamond: "He was a joke that crossed the line".

The garbage quality screenplay is by far the worst aspect of this movie. If you still want to watch it for the visuals, make sure to shut off your brain first.