Hate Crime

A Jewish family, who have recently moved into the neighbourhood, celebrates the birthday of their youngest son. Camera at the ready the father films the proceedings. Little do they suspect what will become of the night…from a time of celebration to one of terror! Hate Crime is when a Neo-Nazi gang decides they don't want Jews in their town and go to scare them off with a home invasion and acts of terror. Drug fuelled they take a step too far at the beginning then roll with this into something much worse. Taking the camera off the father they film the proceedings James Cullen Bressack's second feature length film is a very different monster to his first, his very personal journey that is My Pure Joy! Naturally a film from the perspective of thugs shooting footage of their own crime belongs in the Found Footage genre. It is very well done as well; there is a true feeling of viewing something that is actually happening with no unnecessary shaky camera work. Firstly we get what we would expect from a father fooling around with his camera then later on with the Neo-Nazis filming their atrocities towards the family.

James Cullen Bressack seems to be able to get a lot out of his actors here in Hate Crime! All the players in this from both parties portray their roles well. There is suitable amount of both terror and anguish from the family at what is happening to them. Each one is believable in what they they are experiencing. Then we have the three Neo-Nazis. These guys were great, suitably menacing and crazy; a real feeling of a drug fuelled menace. Each uses a number to represent themselves. No. #1 and No. #3 are brothers and No. #2 is their friend and fellow Neo-Nazi gang member. These brothers are pretty crazy guys while their friend seems more in control. Especially with the eldest brother No. #3, his mannerisms and the way he moves are brilliant! Being a film about violence towards innocence there are effects, and thankfully Mr Bressack went with all practical visual effects. There are some great moments when these effects are used very well, but I won't discuss them here as I don't want to spoil the film! Something else stood out for me too, and perhaps it is strange for me to mention, but the gunshots sound real in this and not tinny or what have you as we sometimes get; for whatever reason this stuck with me.

My only real negative about Hate Crime is the scene with the mother being raped by No. #3 and the later rape. I felt more nudity would have made this more shocking for the viewer! Not necessarily full frontal and what have you though. I think this would have been more shocking in creating an even more feeling of helplessness for the character of the mother. Although maybe the actress wasn't willing to go so far, thus what we get is all that could be done. However, in stating this it is still a great scene with the terror portrayed by the mother done very well.

With what we get with Hate Crime, James Cullen Bressack succeeds with his goal of creating a film that depicts the hatred of one group of people towards another with a different set of beliefs! Of filming torments being thrusted upon a family who were expecting a night of celebration and fun.

• Splat

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What do you get when three LSD, alcohol filled crazy Neonatzis makes a home movie? You get "Hate Crime".

There are several big problems with this found footage, firstly, we get little to no introduction to the victim family, there is little to no establishing of the characters.

Movie starts at the dinner table and this perfect opportunity to tell us the viewers more about them is completely wasted, and we jump right in to the action with three home invaders.

Entire movie is told from incredibly shaky, painful to endure perspective and finally is way too long. I almost gave up halfway through due to horrendous camera work.

It could easily be a 30-min short and I think it would work much better this way.

Alto there are some really gruesome, messed up scenes in this movie so if you want to be shocked, you might want to try to watch this found footage.

I found this movie to be interesting at first, but now i'm disappointed with myself. I don't know what i found so interestimg in this movie, it definetly had potential but... yeah.

Hate crimes are a real problem and the movie is not the worst thing i have ever seen, it focuses on something important but does that really matter when the movie only scares you by showing some nazi's brutal fantasies? That's all you will get from this movie, it's not going to educate you and show you what is actually happening. I don't know why this movie was made, i didn't like it at all but i also don't really hate it because i have seen worse movies.

When it comes to extreme films, there aren't many films out there that are more extreme than Hate Crime. This is filled with anti Semitic material from start to finish, as a Jewish family is brutalized by a rampaging trio of Neo Nazi home invaders.

We don't get much character insight at all before the carnage begins, which is the exact problem with the movie. Here we are supposed to sympathize for the characters, which the director succeeds in doing, but only because of the level of violence inflicted upon them, as opposed to generating some characters with any depth in them. Cardboard cutouts who have no name, no personality, just the capability of screaming to let the viewer know that they are in pain and remind everybody of how bad the situation is. Its like the horrible acts of violence that we hear on the news every night. We sympathize with the victims because of the situation, but we forget about it days later, because we didn't know them. That is the best way I can sum up Hate Crime. Yes, the victims are going through some very bad things, but we don't know these people. We don't know their interests. We don't know their names.

Hate Crime will appeal to those who like shocking acts of violence on screen for the sake of being rebellious, but if you want something with depth, then you are better off looking elsewhere!

Before I get into this one, I must admit, without any intention of comparing a film to another one that if there is something that gets me interested every damn time about film, are subjects such as the one in HATE CRIME. Racism, discrimination, human rights are all things exploited in movies such as the great SHINDLER'S LIST, A TIME TO KILL, and the extraordinary American HISTORY X. These films, for a reason or another all got me to my stomach and I haven't forgotten any of them since. And James Cullen Bressack's HATE CRIME qualifies as one of them. But, nope, scratch that part. Should it be different, HATE CRIME's far closer to a pure horror film than a Drama. Call me a pussy, call me too sensitive, at first I wasn't too sure if I should test myself with this film, but something inside me felt like I had to. So I took the red pill and watched it.

HATE CRIME is the story of a Jewish family. New to their neighborhood, they're about to celebrate their son's birthday. They want to immortalize the event on camera but soon after the party begins, a bunch of crazy, stoned neo Nazi lunatics storm in the house.

This is all I need to give away if you haven't seen the film yet and maybe intend to test yourself. The nightmare that follows starts within about the first 5 minutes of the film and it doesn't let go until the very end. Turning that film into a survival experience, in which a desperate family becomes hostage of a group of people that obviously hate them.

Most of the time, the visual style of HATE CRIME, which involves letting an actor run with the camera surprisingly serves the overall film pretty well with allowing the filmmaker to get as close as the action as he wants you to be and instead of making you feel for the sympathetic characters, just simply making you resent the fear, the anger, the cries and all the emotions storming inside the protagonists. HATE CRIME manages at times to challenge the viewer. I must admit that I've been tested on more than one occasion as this night which started as a quiet, birthday evening became such a fierce and crazy night of crimes beyond what I could have imagined. And that is why I won't spoil you in this review with much about the disaster that occurs but rest assure that pushing beyond the limits isn't something that this film shies away from, as I thought that only animal cruelty and abuse on child and women could happen to make me uncomfortable in horror films anymore.

There are very few weaknesses for this one that don't really bother the entire work. For instance, one of the masked assailants, the biggest one's voice will appear incredibly hard to hear clearly through his mask, making his dialogues hard to understand for the first minutes of the ordeal. But one can thank the need to take himself into such a horrific ride, or the will to see the protagonists' triumph, the film builds strength for itself that far exceed the little flaws. I felt like I must see this film and I did. This one is a rewarding piece of indie film overall. And I'm really looking forward into James Cullen Bressack's future in film as I'm looking to have the chance to see more of his past work. Including the intriguing: TO JENNIFER.