Escape

What I liked: Great choice of location. I found myself looking it up. I'm not someone who particularly likes blood and guts films but the violence was fairly well done.

What I didn't: Terrible script. Most of the acting was quite amateurish but the dialogue didn't help. The rescue room team were a joke and added nothing. What was going on with the mothers? The random vagrant drink in an abandoned and ruined building in the middle of nowhere. How did he get there? And the girl calling into each clearly empty space asking for help! Then there was the completely unnecessary story about a childhood guilt which was met with some dreadful over acting from the listener. Meanwhile the guy hunting them was wandering around aimlessly presumably waiting for her to finish.

Conclusion: A serious subject badly written, produced and directed with the main lure being the very pretty and scantily clad girls. My first thumbs down in a while.

I love the concept. It would be nice if there were more horror movies where the female characters are not complete morons.

Unfortunately, this isn't it. It's not a horror movie, more like a really bad comedy.

Almost every scene reminded me a scenes from horror movie parodies.

The acting is absolutely horrible. No character is believable. As bad as the girls were, the parants' "war room" side was so much worse and unnecessary.

The bad guys, especially the boss, were so badly written. The accents just made it worse.

The dialogs and the script are just bad. Karla telling that long dumb unrelated childhood story while being chased was just hilarious.

Also, Lucy finding this ABANDONED structure in the middle of the desert going door to door (openings, no actual doors) asking if anyone is home was absolutely dumb and funny (The building has no roof, ffs!). Surprising, she finds that useless homeless that hands her a plastic bottle that seem to be full with urine and cigarettes, yet she tries to drink it, then vomits.

This movie is terrible. The only thing going for it is the decent cinematography and the desert shots and the pretty good gritty efrects.

Best if avoided.

Th scenery shots were about the best this movie had to offer, it was shockingly terrible acting from actors who were just going through the motions with zero effort put into what they were doing or saying, lets not get started on the horribly misplaced back stories of the main characters or the sheer stupidity of their actions and of their captors and WTH was with that random drunk in the middle of nowhere, he had absolutely no business or purpose in the entire movie, the rocks had better parts than he did. All up the entire thing from start to finish isn't worth the time or effort it takes to watch it.

As a devoted fan of horror/exploitation cinema, the luckiest you can probably get is by attending the world-premiere of a title that might eventually grow out to become a cult classic. I'm honestly not sure if "Escape" will ever become one, but it certainly has the potential and the entertainment value for it! And should it become a cult classic, I'll be even prouder to say I was there at the world premiere in Belgium, at a lovely little genre festival and in the presence of the director and a large part of the cast.

"Escape" is basically an upgrade of the nasty and cruel "Women in Prison/Hunting Humans" exploitation sub-genre of the 70s and early 80s, in which beautiful girls - in torn clothes and with their breasts hanging out - were beaten, raped, hunted, and killed by sadist prison wardens of perverted yokels. Luckily, times have evolved. The girls here aren't hysterical bimbos that run around like headless chickens anymore, but strong and organized power-women that fight back with a plan.

In Fuerteventura, a criminal gang is targeting attractive young (and exclusively blond) young women on holiday, brutally kidnap them, and lock them up in the basement of a secluded villa in the desert until the group is big enough to ship them off on a container ship to overseas customers. The girls, and especially Karla and Lucy, manage to stay relatively calm given the circumstances, and await the first chance they'll get to escape.

Writer/director Howard J. Ford clearly knows and loves the genre. He knows very well what type of "evil" men to cast as the villains. You know, creeps with scars, eye-patches, and terrible dental hygiene that disrespectfully gaze at women as if they are cold beers on a hot summer day. The girls are obviously cast primarily on their good looks and bikini-bodies, but it's fantastic to see how they also have brains and a strong will to survive. "Escape" - too bad about the numeric title - also features several tense moments, exhilarating action, and a handful of shocking scenes. Of course, there are defaults as well, like the clichéd traumas some of the girls are dragging along, but they are not too bothersome. In my humble opinion a movie like "Escape" is successful if you can barely stop yourself from yelling encouraging stuff to the girls on the screen. That was the case for me during "Escape". I dare you NOT to cheer for the girl holding the scissors to do "her thing" during the climax. You simply can't.

Ten young women are kidnapped by sex traffickers. And, given the title, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say they try to escape.

You might remember the director from The Dead, a zombie film set in Africa. I kind of liked that. This is a bit more of a traditional exploitation movie. Lots of youngish women in revealing clothes running around, trying to escape brutish guys.

The interesting thing about Escape is that the women fight back. Instead of just screaming for help, they throw punches and sometimes rocks. The fight choreography is a bit poor, but I liked that they made the effort. A lot of these kinds of thrillers get kind of annoying and repetitive with all the running and screaming.

It feels a bit long even at 90 minutes, but it's certainly watchable. There are also maybe too many characters. It's easier to keep a dozen characters straight when they're dressed and styled differently, but these are all youngish blondes in beach outfits. There was a nurse who was pretty cool, but the others kind of blended together.

If you're in the mood for a B movie, you might as well give it a try. If you're looking for something more than that, skip it.