Death Factory

This film has exactly three good things: the location, the original main villain and the music. The music is a good tribute to the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and single handedly lifts this film from a 1 to a 2.

Apart from that the casting, the acting, the lighting, the editing, the dialogue, the plot and the sound is so bad it couldn't even pass for a student film. Especially the casting, which is truly bad considering this film tries to include historical serial killers.

Also, the film has no proper ending, and there are several scenes that are so disjointed it seems like there are missing reels.

One of the worst movies I have seen this year, and I have seen plenty.

The acting? Abysmal.

The premise? Sophomoric.

The special effects? Laughable and poorly implemented.

This movie was seriously worse than a SyFy original movie, and we all know just how bad those atrocities can be. The only redeeming quality about this movie is that I was able to turn it off 40 minutes in. It was simply a horribly made film, written and directed by people who lack the vision and talent to ever do anything other than third-rate C-movies. Avoid this like you owe it money. An abomination in every conceivable way.

THE FACTORY is one of those horror films that sounds good in concept but turns out to be a real load of nonsense. The problem with it is that it's another low budget indie production which means bad script, bad direction and bad acting. A busload of cliched characters head off to a serial killer museum but find themselves stalked when the killers come back to life and look for new victims. The blood and gore is in short supply here but one of the characters is a martial artist so we do get a handful of fight scenes randomly shoehorned into the mix. What's most irritating is the level of excess on display in the acting.

Because it has to be a comedy, right? It stretches the imagination that anyone would think of this as anything else, it's so packed with outrageous stereotypes, epicly bad acting, gratuitous sex just shoved into the story like the director had to fill a quota, and perhaps the worst dialogue in all of cinema history. Listen: It's even worse than "Is it raining? I hadn't noticed." [Four Weddings and a Funeral-but who doesn't know that?)

Accordingly, I loved it. It now ranks at #1 in my list of "Movies So Bad I Can't Stop Watching Them," displacing Point Break for the first time in 20 years. I love how hard the actors are working (you can see them working their drama class training); I love how seriously the film portrays itself. So earnest. So committed. So sad.

In the introduction, a hillbilly woman is (somewhat disturbingly) beaten and killed by who appears to be her violent ex-boyfriend, before said goon is killed by the lady's son. I'm still in the process of sorting out how this fits into the whole storyline, but maybe that's pointless, as proved later.

A few decades later, that same son has grown into a bearded and broody hunk. He's part of a group of disparate individuals heading to the desert for some sort of spiritual enlightenment trek. There's a preacher and his dull girlfriend, the goofy best friend, the sports fanatic, 2 bimbos, 2 worthless goths, a fat foul-mouthed lady, etc.. Halfway through, their bus breaks down and they hike to a ghost town. The same ghost town that, earlier on, a salesman "bought" the rights to the Death Factory Museum from an unsuspecting local. The poor chap must have been the only left resident in town. After some accidental sexual witchcraft, the 2 goths awaken the spirits of legendary serial killers like Ed Gein, Jack the Ripper, and a a healthy handful of others (including a bare-chested lethal vixen I couldn't recognize, but maybe she was only there for gender equality). The broody and hunky son makes it a mission to save his reluctant posse by absorbing the spirit of said killers, then there's some capoeira, and the Devil, and it just stops making sense.

If you agree to not try and make sense of the very messy storyline, you will probably be pleasantly entertained by the varied shenanigans. All the killers have great presence (except maybe for the aforementioned vixen, probably because she has no back-story in our collective pop consciousness). They are strongly portrayed, have threatening presence, and are prominently featured. There's lots of actions and gruesome killings, some refreshing nudity, the plot twists keep on popping until the very end, there's nothing to be bored with. Just leave your expectations at the door and enjoy the heartfelt ride.