Torture

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.

Another one of those horror movies that I got solely due to the cover artwork. My mistake. Although some of the acting could be deemed less than extremely pathetic, the directing was not. He has absolutely no idea how to create a suspenseful atmosphere. Granted, the script from Kirk Sever didn't give him much to work with, but there were still times where it was obvious he didn't maximize the suspense. I wasn't scared once. I was however left wondering, "Kirk Sever wants his sister to do what to him...?" It tried to use shock value to create a horror movie, but we've seen Saw, Faces of Death, Hostel, etc. You're gonna have to take it a lot farther than that. Otherwise it'll just look lame, as it did. Overall it looked like a decent high school project. Nowhere near anything worthy of being on a Blockbuster shelf. If you like horror movies, even if you like bad horror movies, do not watch this. The only way you could justify watching this garbage is if you're an up and coming horror director/writer and you want to see what not to do.

I pretty much watch all horror movies voraciously, and I LIKE my torture porn - right along with my psychological thrillers and good, old-fashioned slasher/monster flicks. With the recent lines of Saw and Hostel setting the bar for outrageous gore effects fairly high, I'm not surprised to see the lower budget movies struggling to keep up with the trend. Gag does use what budget it has effectively enough in its gore shots. They didn't skimp on the blood, and while some of the stunts were ridiculous, I'm not entirely sure they weren't intended to be.

It's a watchable film, but it drags. The writing and delivery of lines were often amateurish, which made the dialogue difficult to sit through at times. Had the death and torture sequences been more outrageous, it could have been truly shocking. Had they been a little more ridiculous, it could have been horrifyingly funny. Had they hired a different script writer, it might even have been clever. The end result is a sloppy movie that lacks commitment to be anything other than another low-budget fright flick with lofty ambitions and no follow-through. Worth a rental for genre fans, certainly, but not really worth a movie theater ticket - even at the matinée price. I'm not surprised it didn't get a general release.

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.

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.