Frayed

I saw this at the Screamfest in Hollywood on October 18 2007. Finding out after viewing this movie that it was made on a shoestring budget with newcomer actors in Seattle, Washington, I have to give makers of this film some props. The setups are top notch, the lighting and visuals are on par with much of what Hollywood even puts out for horror. Some of the actors in the film showed quality also. There is a pitch perfect scene involving a character in the back of a pick-up truck. Everyone involved seemed to be into making a good movie.

All that being said, there were a lot of problems with the film. The makers said that the film didn't have a distributor yet, and I think when they do get one (and I'm sure that will be real soon) the distributor will have them trim some of the fat. and there is a good bit of fat to be trimmed. There was some unnecessary scenes of people talking to each other on cell phones, relating things we already knew.

They say they pay homage to 'Halloween'(the original); that's great and all, but there is a difference between homage and heavily borrowing...They didn't list 'Haute Tension', 'Identity', 'Silence of the Lambs' either and there was definitely some lending from those films as well.

If there was a grade for suspense alone this film would get a 9 in my book. If you come looking for a bloody/gory movie, this is not your flick. If you loved the first Halloween you will very likely dig this movie.

When I think of all the crap horror films that go straight to DVD, if I stumbled upon this flick I think I would be pleasantly surprised.

I went to the Nevermore Film Festival in Durham, NC (Daniel & Emily, Norb if your reading this), because of course I have a love for horror films. As I was browsing through the films for the Nevermore Festival, trying to pick which ones I thought I should see. I watched the trailer for Frayed, and knew it was one that I had to see. I was expecting a nice little low budget horror film, and got something completely different. Frayed is honestly one of the best horror films I've seen in a long time.

Frayed is a dream come true for horror fans, they don't lie when they say their is most brutally scene ever depicted on film, there's not a lot of scenes in horror movies that I find hard to watch, but that one was one of the hardest and gut wrenching scenes I have ever seen.

Frayed has a lot of similarities with Halloween, but believe me overall they are nothing alike. The ending was literally jaw-dropping, I expected a twist ending, but nothing like what I got. If this movie comes to a theater/festival or when it comes on DVD I highly highly recommend it.

The movie is done on a low-budget, but honestly it looks like it came from Hollywood with a much larger budget. It's impressive what the filmmakers have done with the film, and it really deserves to get released into theaters as a mainstream movie. I look forward to seeing more movies from this group, I really believe if they keep coming out with stuff like this they could be up there with horror icons like John Carpenter and Wes Craven...etc...

Good luck guys

FRAYED is a psychological horror film with an introductory "home movie" segment that can only be described as gruesomely extreme.

This is the story of Kurt Baker, a seriously disturbed young man, and his entry into adulthood. We're taken on a whirlwind adventure filled with insanity and murder, ultimately learning the shocking truth behind Kurt's condition.

Or do we?

The ending is as surprising as it is genuinely disturbing. A unique take on a well-worn sub-genre...

A town sheriff's mentally ill sun murders his mother and he is sent away to an insane asylum, years later he escapes and starts to wreak havoc in the community.

Of course the storyline is a lot more fleshed out than what I've summed up, like there is actually a reason why the child is mentally sick but I'm not going to spoil it, because this film is actually worth seeing for any horror fan, its probably one of the more unconventional horror films I've seen because with other slasher horror films I can actually predict who will die and who will live, with FRAYED I was way off the entire time and that was probably the first time that's happened to me in years and the array of plot twist at the end drove me nuts because that's when the film really took hold.

The suspense is kept surprisingly high thanks to the relatively casual pace of the film which helps to keep the viewer hooked and allow for some well done character development.

Note, I did say it was close to becoming a classic but there is only one flaw that keeps it from actually being a classic, its not 100% original despite having a great plot, if you look carefully you'll notice it seems to borrow from older films Like HALLOWEEN (1978) but en light of that I'd put it along with LAID TO REST as one of the more competently made slashers in a while.

I wondered just how much gore and blood this film would contain after I watched the opening where a woman gets beaten in the face with a baseball bat. Over and over and over, the hitting continued past what I would consider dead.

Is this film going to be "over the top"? No problem there. It was more suspense than actual blood and gore. It was a chase to catch an escaped mental patient before he could kill the Sheriff's daughter.

For a low budget film made with inexperienced actors, it was really good. Kept you guessing to the very end, and beyond. What really did happen?