The Hamiltons

This was a very interesting film. I'm not much of a horror/slasher fanatic, but I can appreciate a good story line. This one has a pretty decent plot behind it, but something was lost along the way. I enjoyed the way it was shot--with the younger brother's video project changing it up a bit from the norm. The family includes a set of twins and I think the relationship between the two of them is pretty bizarre, but actually it added a lot to the film. The character Lenny keeps us interested throughout the whole movie, trying to figure out who/what he is, and that was a totally off-the-wall twist. Francis is a relatable character--young teen full of questions and despair, and his development throughout the story was worth observing. It's definitely a strange one, but I got a real kick out of it. I especially like the ending sequence(s) where they start to explain themselves..totally weird. I recommend it, if nothing else, just for the laughs.

... all the money (that's Greek idiom, which means that it's on the spot)! Because we're not talking about your average family (at least that's not how I imagine the US of A ;o) ). But it's best not to know anything else from this movie, just that this is a thriller/horror, with some crazy family folks. The actors might not be up to any academy award standard, but they still do fit the bill here quit nicely.

Some scenes will require the viewer to stomach a few things (although "veterans" might just only suppress a yawn), but it is necessary for the story, as you will found out. So the violence never is as over the top as some other movies (also described as gore porn, because it's too much violence), but still enough/too much for some people. After that warning, I'm leaving it up to you to decide if you want to watch this "nice" little "b-movie" ...

This was one of the films from the After Dark Horrorfest and like most of them it was incredibly poor. The film is painfully slow. It might have worked as a 30 minute short but as a feature film it bored the hell out of me. The film tries to set up this mystery as to what it is they are doing and why they are doing it but by the time it was revealed I had already lost interest in the story.

Also, the acting in this film is incredibly poor, especially the older brother, who at times is laughable. This film was obviously made on a low budget but I can forgive the low production values. You work with what you've got, lots of great films have been made on a tiny budget (night of the living dead). However, what I can't forgive is a lack of talent. The writing and acting were downright horrible and if that's the case then the budget is irrelevant because the film is going to suck. They were clearly trying to make this an art house film but instead they just made a stinker that will put you to sleep before the first hour.

"The Hamiltons" has a great premise, and the ending of the film is inches from being extremely satisfying. On its own, an excellent ending...it's getting there that's the problem with the film.

The fundamental flaw of "The Hamiltons" is that it's caught between being a serial killer film and a family drama, and unlike "Suburban Nightmare" - which was similar, also an indie, and much better in my opinion - "The Hamiltons" refuses to commit to its characters. It wants you to empathize with them at the same time it paints them as violent sociopaths. In doing this I found the ending disingenuous, and most of the movie was simply too scattered.

There ARE strong points to the film. The main character, Francis, is easily the most well-developed character. Although he gets too whiny and, frankly, useless at times, he's able to make the transition into action with aplomb. His relationship with one of the women being held in the cellar of the house is particularly well-written and potent.

The problem is that the movie feels forced to bend to genre conventions, and in doing so it makes the other three members of the family unsympathetic in the extreme. The characters of Wendell and Darlene are written well as sociopaths, but the problem comes when the film wants you to identify with them and accept them as part of this family, and you can't imagine why anyone would love them even if they WERE family.

The film is worth watching, but the script really could've used another run through editing to work out the kinks.

I saw this film at Cinequest, the San Jose Film Festival, in March of 2006. The Hamiltons is a movie with writing and directing credit going to "The Butcher Brothers". I think this is a name we will be seeing more from in the future. They've managed to put together a good old-fashioned scare fest, with some very powerful shocks along the way, all while using very basic gore and makeup effects.

The movie is about a group of grown siblings, whose parents have died, who are living together as a family unit, trying to be a "normal" suburban family. But they have a terrible secret. Part of that secret is that they abduct and kill people (mostly lovely young women). The rest of the secret is what keeps us involved throughout the mayhem that follows.

They've managed to create an atmosphere similar to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, without being quite so gruesome or so unrelenting. Mixed among the powerful killing and torture scenes are scenes of banal domestic dysfunction. They are obviously big horror fans and sprinkle the movie with references to the movies genre fans love.

My only complaint is that they overindulge in camera tricks. Some of the tricks are very effective. In the pre-credit scene a woman is killed, but the violence occurs in a series of extremely rapid cuts (I'm guessing maybe 3 per second) which keeps us from quite seeing what's happening. This allows our bloody imaginations to do much of the work and keeps us from noticing how simple the make-up effects are. I would like to have seen them use this technique again, but instead they went on to try every camera trick they could think of.

The youngest brother is camcording much of the family action, he says for a school project. This gives the directors an excuse to have many square-cropped, bouncy scenes, with jagged edges around the objects and low resolution. Other scenes are grainy with a shot-on-videotape-in-poor-lighting look. Much of the movie is in high-resolution, beautiful 35mm. Then, even more distractingly, they start mixing up the resolution and cropping mattes, so that we get a high resolution square shot, supposedly from the camcorder, so the actor can look good in close up. There's a couple of scenes where the shot alternates between two actors in dialog and one of them is shot in the grainy tape-look format while the other one is in high-res 35mm. Nearly all of the violent scenes are augmented? by quick-motion, tracers, vibrating cameras, or something else to add impact not present in the action itself. I'm sure they had fun playing all these camera games. The problem is that it draws us out of the story. I spent much of the movie's time thinking about such things, instead of wondering what they were going to do to those poor girls next. There are a few soundtrack scares, but they don't overdo this.

If it ever gets released, I'll want to see it again. The camera tricks do not make the movie unwatchable, they're just distracting. It's a much better movie than a lot of low-budget horror and it left me with the kind of feeling I get from the old 70s and 80s slashers, but it's not as graphic.