Cornered!

In Los Angeles, a serial-killer with unknown identity is slaughtering clients in convenience stores. The steals the surveillance tapes and the police department has offered a US$ 500,000.00 reward for him.

In a trashy convenience store, the owner Steve (Eduardo Antonio Garcia), his clients Mona (Ellia English) that works with phone sex and the whore Jess (Elizabeth Nicole), his employee Donny Donut (Peter Story) and his junky nephew Jimmy (James Duval) discuss with the carrier Morty (Steve Guttenberg) what they would do with the serial-killer if they capture him.

Morty goes away and Steve invites the group to play a poker game, with Jimmy is affected by the forced abstinence. Out of the blue, they are attacked by a masked killer during a night of terror.

"Cornered!" is an unpleasant and stupid low-budget film with fake reviews promoting it. The uninteresting and dull story has lowlife characters and never holds the attention of the viewer. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Brutal! A Face do Demônio" ("Brutal! – The Face of the Demon")

Cornered! Treats slasher fans like they're morons.

First off, whoever authored this DVD does not know movies. There's a trailer for THIS VERY movie in the previews. Spoiler alert! You don't put the trailer for the movie you're about to watch right before the movie.

A bunch of misfits barricade themselves up in a store with a serial killer on the loose.

The only thing good about this movie is the killer's methods (and the twist on how he obtains this information). This filmmaker has chosen to spell it out for you, not once (once would be too much), but TWICE! The Dumb Decision trope is in full effect in this one, and I think it costs every last character their lives.

Ok, every horror movie has a skeptic. They play the skeptic trope to the Nth degree with Steve, the store owner. He's not just skeptical, he's 100% CLUELESS. You'd think this was a parody, but I'm pretty sure this is a straight-up slasher (even with the presence of Steve Guttenberg). People say alarming things to him, and he just mumbles to himself. He follows a blood trail to the basement that he is convinced is a prank done with ketchup. Two survivors find the keys to leave the store, and... the way this all plays out is too ridiculous to even go into. You can watch it for yourself if you have a masochistic streak. I don't know how much dumber Daniel Maze and Darrin Grimwood could have written these characters.

Yeah, Steve Guttenberg appears at the beginning and the end of this movie. So, if anyone needs their Police Academy fix.

Cornered! (2009)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pretty bad slasher flick about a serial killer stalking convenient stores in Los Angeles. A store owner and his friends sit down to have a poker game after hours one night and sure enough, the killer shows up and starts to pick them off one by one. There are countless direct-to-DVD horror releases out there so you have to pick them with caution but I decided to give this one a go since Steve Guttenberg has a small part. I'm sure those who grew up watching POLICE ACADEMY wondered what he was up to in his recent movies and this here was my shot of seeing him again but it frankly wasn't worth the trouble. This screenplay is without question one of the strangest I've seen because it features a lot of bums and the reason for this is beyond me. We have the store owner who is obviously a cheap, rude jerk. We have his nephew who runs the cash register and just happens to be a meth head. We've got a prostitute trying to pick up some extra cash. We have one lady who works as a phone sex operator. We even have an overweight guy hooked on donuts. Umm....what the hell? Have we really gotten to the point in horror films where one of the characters needs to be addicted to donuts? I'm not sure if this was meant to be part of the humor but the laughs certainly never work and this is painfully obvious in a scene early one where another bum, this time a homeless man, tries to steal some alcohol. I'm really not sure what the point of this comedy was but it certainly doesn't work but then again neither does the horror or mystery aspects. The killer was rather obvious within the first five minutes so the entire mystery gets flushed right down the toilet. With the comedy and mystery gone you'd think we'd at least get some gory deaths, right? Well, wrong. The violence for the most part is rather tame and the bloodiest scene is actually a quick edit to part of a jelly donut dripping onto a table. The performances in the film were fair and that includes Guttenberg who at least proves he still has some nice comic timing. With that said, CORNERED! is a low-budget slasher film that doesn't work on any level and should certainly be skipped.

Yeah, it's somewhat slow. And yes, the characters are exceedingly dumb. I mean they figured out how the killer is killing them but not who - which could be gleaned from the exact same information. And even before that, there is a massive clue who the killer is because information that only they would know is tipped to the entire group and audience.

Things the film has going for it. The killer's mask. Yep, I am a fan of that. While it is impractical, it is still a pleasing aesthetic. And some of the character studies are fun. Mona's business phone calls. The addiction subplot. The kills. The theatrical roaches. The VCR aspect. The ending.

Stuff that was meh. The owner is insufferable and his financial woes are lame. The fact that Donnie was not a long-lost Kevin James/Gary Valentine (Knipfing) brother but just some guy named Peter Story - which totally sounds made up.

Anyway, this movie is watchable. Because I apparently had already seen it, rated it, never left a review and then rewatched it, thinking this seems familiar.

This flick was made by first-time director Daniel Moerenhout but is better known in his country and into the music scene as Daniel Maze. The man surely knows what he want, he had a one hit wonder with Scoop in 1999 and made his first so-called flick when he was eleven. One way or another he managed to make his first Hollywood flick. But you really need a teaser to promote your flick so he found Steve Guttenberg of the Police Academy fame. And I must admit, he still has it, he was believable even as the Police Academy wasn't my cup of tea. The others were luckily believable too. I enjoyed the movie but it has a few let downs. First of all, some killings are a bit lame, secondly, it take a while before the movie really starts. You really have to wait almost an hour. Before that you will have a lot of talking, dirty talk and bad manners. Of course there is a bit of black humor mixed in it but not everybody will notice that. Just look at the flying donut... After 30 minutes you will get murder number one but that was really a lame one, combined with again the black humor (the ice cream cones). Somehow it reminded me a bit of The Intruder, the storyline I mean. But after a hour the red stuff starts to flow, some killings become really nasty and one killing is really worth watching, a slo-mo and close up of a victim's slicing. Nice to see. Luckily as a slow builder you get what you are waiting for. It has an open ending but I guess they won't franchise it. The killer itself, well, his mask did remind me of the 80's slasher Blackout and the more unknown Zipperface. Nice flick but you will have to wait to get cornered.