Exploited

I've sat through many a big budget horror film that was far, far worse. Here's what I'll say. The film held my attention throughout. The characters were interesting, and the acting strong. The film has a polished and professional look and feel -- certainly as professional as any mainstream Hollywood horror genre film. The film also kept me guessing about the killer and it did not have that typical "third act letdown" that so many horror films have.

The movie has a strong opening that creates a curiosity to see what happened, and where the story is going. The acting is fine - for this kind of movie. I don't think 'slasher' films are known for their superb acting, or scripts.

There are so many holes in the story, though, that it starts to become distracting. Particularly the last minutes of the film, where characters seem to be coming out of nowhere, without any reasonable motivation to be there in the scene at all.

So, yes, the 'exploiter/hacker' isn't too hard to figure out. But the big reveal at the end is usurped by the earlier scene when you think - "Oh, hell, who else could it possibly be!?"

People you saw being murdered, stabbed through the heart, magically reappear alive and well. Some of the situations are simply silly if for no other reason than the characters that show up in them.

There are gay characters, but I wouldn't really characterize it as a 'gay film.'

If you have nothing else to do, and want to watch a mystery whodunnit sort of movie, it's an option.

But, for the record, it's NOT about, as the blurb suggests, "A college freshman becomes obsessed with the previous owner of his school issued laptop." It's a thumb drive, and his wasn't issued to him by the school. But how it ended up in his possession is one more thing that is shown, but not quite explained. Was it stashed in a draw? Who put it there? Did it belong to the roommate? Was it left in the room by last year's occupant?

Right off the bat, the premise isn't really explained. I guess I'm a stickler for details. This missed a lot of them.

Something was always happening and you kept wanting to see what would happen next. At first it was hard to tell who was gay and who was straight. There was nudity so this is not for teens. The overall story was good and so were the actors in it. I would not mind seeing it again. I probably won't, but I wouldn't mind it.

To the one review saying that only homophobes will dislike this movie, I am gay, and neither me nor my husband liked this movie.

With that out of the way, there is one positive I have, the directing. Director Jon Abrahams (yes, the guy from Scary Movie and the House of Wax remake), showed a lot of potential here, and was easily the best part of the film. Really solid panning shots, and not any particularly bad shots either. He could easily direct some great films with the right script.

Onto the bad. The acting and script are both mediocre at best. No one turns in a particularly great performance, and some are downright bad (granted, the dialogue doesn't help them any). The script is the main offender, which has a LOT of problems.

First off, this is hardly a horror/slasher, it's basically a mystery with slight (and I mean slight) horror elements for about 80% of its runtime, which an really low body count. As a result, it's kinda just boring up until the over the top crazy finale. I expected this to be bad, but in a fun so bad it's good type of way, which it didn't become until the end (at least those sweet panning shots looked nice though).

The whodunnit aspect was incredibly predictable. If you've ever seen a whodunnit before, you should have absolutely no problem figuring this one out. It's possibly the easiest to figure out of any movie/show/game/book I've ever witnessed.

All that said, there is quite a bit of nudity/sex in this. So that may be a positive for some (although I didn't personally enjoy these scenes, to each their own).

Overall, it's pretty bad, but by no means the worst gay film I've seen. Probably not even in the bottom 20 worst gay films I've seen. So while I wouldn't recommend this, there are worse films out there, and this is arguably the best "gay slasher" since there's little competition. The main takeaway is that Jon Abrahams should direct more films. He's really quite good.

Usually gay movies (not Oscar-bait bs) are terrible. Really terrible. Usually they're romantic comedies. This is not that. This is a very nicely-produced movie and it even features good actors. There should be more movies like this: it's sexy, fun, stupid, suspenseful, and campy. Either you like that combination of things or you don't. I do.

These filmmakers by the way should have made Cold Moon Over Babylon. The villain in this, although he doesn't have an exposed hairy chest, conjured up in my mind what I imagined Michael McDowell's villain to look like. Unfortunately that book was made into a film sans McDowell's gay sensibilities and completely blew chunks.

Exploited's user rating definitely should not be hovering around the 3.5 territory. If you ever wanted to like David DeCoteau's gay genre flicks but couldn't, this movie is a giant step up from those. And while I'm beyond sick to death of gay coming out stories, this one doesn't count because it has so much else going on. Worth a watch.