Escape

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.

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.

Overall, I enjoyed this film, although it did seem to be a lower-budget version of 'Taken', but instead of Liam Neeson kicking ass, there are numerous hot 'blondes' doing it. Combining their superior psyche, these females exploit the machismo, one-dimensional nature of the villains, especially in the final act. That being said, I thought the actors cast as the antagonists did a good job. In particular, I enjoyed the camaraderie and 'friendship' between the eyepatch character and his Eastern European accomplice (Jon-Paul Gates, who I have seen in other films). Even though both were abducting and raping women at will, I thought their character traits personified the Eastern European mafia, where loyalty is not as important as greed and self-aggrandisement. When Gates attempts to drive the car, bleeding profusely, and Eyepatch asserts he can't drive, is hilarious! Some amusing moments in between the carnage of sex trafficking!