Gag

This movie wasn't bad enough to be funny. It was just incredibly painful to watch. But, it did hit the trifecta: 1) The actors CAN'T act to save their souls. 2) The script is just miserably awful. 3) The directing is just sad. Let's start with the set up for the film, two professional burglars break into a house and finding a guy tied up in a basement. The guy tied-up has obviously been beaten and/or tortured and may be dead. One of the burglars wants to leave thinking the guy tied might be dead, the other one refuses to leave until he has cracked open the safe and gotten the money that may be inside. WTF!!! If the police show, we all know who they'd blame. But, there's moron insisting they stay to get the money first and risk lethal injection. The movie goes downhill from there. The characters become infinitely more lame. The story goes from inane to irritating. And the pathetic script, combined with the inadequacies of the actors and director drag this movie down further. (Yes, it's possible for this movie to get worse). I'm convinced the high marks and lauding this movie is receiving is from people who are closely associated with the making of this film, or they are close friends of the people involved. Because this movie just sucked.

Its really a shame that so many of the comments here are unbelievable. Again a movie gets 8-10 star comments although the DVD packaging already says it all. So don't trust any of the comments... "Gag" is far from being scary or a classic. It basically is a cheap take on the "Saw" (Three letter titles everywhere!) torture genre. OK, you got a setting of a devastated house where some psycho killer tortures his victims. Two pretty stupid robbers break in searching for something very special and end up in the middle of the action when finding a bound and gagged guy (Actually I know I have seen exactly this before, but I can't remember the name of the movie). So they get gagged too, 5 victims get several things stuffed into mouths and back end and the movie even has an unexpected twist. Wow... Production values are low on this dimly lit underground movie which tries to shock with some sick torture inventions but fails miserably. The visuals just don't hold up to the sick ideas and while the acting is in parts OK the story is just plain stupid. Some examples... you get captured by an obviously sick pervert with corpses and blood everywhere in his house. He tells you to stick a needle in your arm or he will kill your friend. Sure... you do it, maybe something nice is awaiting both of you (like the trippy drug visions... nice idea but badly executed). 4 people bound and gagged, tortured in a dark cellar and chained to the wall. What does Mr. Psycho do... putting a hood above the one persons head that is just about to break free (sure... he knew, he's super psycho). And the most idiotic thing of all... when you are a psycho who just beat down a captive on the run happy to torture him again and the doorbell is ringing. What do you do?? Right... open up quick with some blood on your face and then have a ridiculous dialog with a cliché cop through a half opened door. You can see that "Gag" tries to be a shocker but nothing here really works. Honestly since there was a decent twist in the middle I expected some real twist in the end (the safe thing was way to obscure for me). But you better be in for a real surprise. "Gag" ends in the most stupid and cheap way I have seen in a long time ... by all means. Editing, Acting, Story development... it just falls apart to nothing. You can multiply the doorbell-idiocy by ten. Even if you are into cheap thrills "Gag" won't do it... the Gore is not that strong as the comments here make you think. Except for the impalement scene which works without showing anything most of the movie just made me yawn... or laugh. In that way "Gag" is a classic ... for some of the most absurd behavior of horror movie victims. I give this one 3 stars for at least some good ideas in the script. Other than that just stay away... the DVD cover says it all.

I seriously don't intend to waste further time or too many words on the review for "Gag", because it's - simply put - a terribly bad and amateurish horror effort! We get it, Mr. Director, you watched "Saw" and you assumed you could do better? Since the birth and the tremendous success of the so-called "torture porn" sub-genre, many aspiring yet sadly untalented directors come up with their own idea for a sick and revolting torture tale. Most of these attempts are bad, but this "Gag" is beyond abysmal and doesn't feature one single positive aspect or redeeming quality. No wait, there is something good about this film, and that's its length! It lasted less than 80 minutes and I was grateful for that. Otherwise we're talking dire settings, lousy editing and lighting, excruciatingly painful acting performances and gratuitously cruel but unimaginative torturing methods & death sequences. "Gag" is so lame that it reuses the same dire plot-twist (if you can even call it that) twice, namely that a victim is mistaken for the culprit. Yawn! Do not watch, unless you are into self-torture.

For those of you who thought that Captivity would be the movie to officially end the torture-porn trend, you were probably right, but just to seal the deal, here's Gag. Gag is an atrocious horror flick which feels more like a gay S&M porno gone wrong than a horror movie. Three men are forced to swallow various objects when they're not gagged or getting f-ed with spears. To me that sounds like the description of a bad gay porno, not to mention the porn-sounding title. Anyway, before I head into this review, I would like to say that I'm very tired from a long days work so this review probably won't be as thorough as I'd like it to be.

Gag tells the story of two professional thieves who break into a seemingly empty house, only to find a man brutally beaten and tied to a bed. Blah, blah, blah, Saw-like twist, blah, blah, blah, torture, blah, blah, incest, blah, blah, you get the idea. Gag is a no-budget Saw rip-off and it's even a shame to call it a Saw rip-off as these guys obviously didn't get what the first Saw movie was all about. It wasn't about torture, it wasn't about S&M, it was about the psychological horror (something which has gone lost in the Saw sequels) - a quality that Gag doesn't have.

Gag may want to be disturbing but it's not, and the "inventive" torture scenes are either ridiculous or down right impossible. A mouse would never crawl down a tube and then eat away at someone's mouth. And sure, getting burnt with boiled pennies may hurt, but to me it just seems like some extreme kind of hazing, not necessarily torture (plus it was very silly to look at). Then we have the fact that the movie both looks and feels homemade. The director obviously doesn't have a clue about what he's doing behind the camera, and the "actors" are even less secure about what they're doing. Hell, it doesn't even seem like these people wanted to be in the movie. Were they really THAT desperate for a pay check? Or perhaps they thought that this would be the next Saw. If so, they can't have been very smart.

It's not the worst movie of the year though and it is watchable if you're into this kind of thing. To me, this is more porn than anything. Remove the gore and add some nudity and you've got yourself a hardcore porn flick (unfortunately not a very good one at that). I won't recommend it but I'm sure there are some people out there who enjoy this kind of thing. I'm just more into movies that actually have a story. In the end, Gag is like an extreme version of Saw, only with a lower budget and with less of a story.

It's rare that a film can offend you morally by sheer ineptitude alone. A movie wherein the act of watching somehow assumes an aura of ethical lapse is a rare and regrettable event. Spending two hours of your time watching "Gag" is an offense against nature. Time is far too valuable a commodity to spend any of it watching this sadistic, amateur, exploitative, unoriginal, clueless, poorly acted, ugly, cheap, offensive, nonsensical, and altogether boring film. And I like horror movies! Made without a modicum of either technical proficiency nor thematic clarity, Gag simply exists as a series of poorly executed, prurient torture scenarios loosely strung together by a ludicrous plot that steadfastly refuses to make sense. Almost atavistic in it's terribleness, Gag is impressively without one iota of taste or style...the total lapse of judgment by the filmmakers is a sort of negative genius. Saddest of all is that this terrible, disgusting story with it's crude and vile images is what these filmmakers thought would make an artistic statement. This is what they have to offer the world. Mean, ugly, and without redemption, Gag lacks any of the charming camp value that usually accompanies the worst of films. Marrying an utter lack of joy with the basest of imaginations and utter dearth of narrative understating, Gag's only redeeming feature is its title: it's utterly apropos.