Salvage

The first thing you should know about "Salvage" is that it's not a typical gore-heavy slasher flick. Although there's gore and at least one really heavy slash (you'll know the one I'm talking about when it happens), "Salvage" is more of a film for the mind along the lines of the quiet thrillers "The Sixth Sense", "The Others" or even going back to the 70s with the likes of "The Wicker Man" and "The Stepford Wives". All of these are films with a powerful, novel concept told without a whole lot of blood & guts but with a heavy punch at the end.

The minute I saw that this film was one of the films selected for the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, I knew to expect something different, and that's indeed what we get. Shot on a super low indie budget of $25,000 (compared to its more famous 2006 box office competitor "Silent Hill" which had a budget of $50 Million), "Salvage" doesn't give us many bells & whistles, no flashy cgi effects, no colossal sets or zombie makeup, and for that reason if you're looking for a mindless popcorn spiller, you might want to look elsewhere and save yourself 80 minutes. However, if you're prepared for a quieter, more thinking type of thriller flick, then this will be perfect.

When I say "thinking type of thriller flick", I don't mean you have to struggle to understand what's happening. Rather, the challenge is in trying to guess *why* it's happening. And I gotta say, the explanation totally surprised and impressed me. It's the kind of ending that makes you think for a long time afterwards.

The cons: Yes, in my title I mentioned that I hated it. This is because at times the film seemed to fight against itself. On one hand it presented itself as a deep, challenging mystery, but this was undermined by a lot of cheap horror flick clichés (the predictable fake scares, unnecessary schlock, and particularly some ridiculously overt sound effects and audio cues. For example there's a scene where a character finds a small trinket that is of significance, which 80% of the audience will recognize immediately, but the audio department decided to hammer it home with a silly "tinkerbell" sound effect as if to say "THIS IS SIGNIFICANT!" Moments like that are peppered throughout the film, and after a while it felt like the filmmakers were treating us like idiots who need tinkerbell sounds whenever something important happens. I suppose the horror genre isn't exactly meant for beard-stroking philosophers, but still, I think the film should have stuck with a subtle, challenging approach which would have been more fitting for the cryptic mystery that is unfolding.

But like I said, the ending really impressed me, and that along with the excellent acting by our main character Claire (Lauren Currie Lewis in her first headlining feature performance) makes this film a great watch. A note about Lauren's acting: she plays a very believable character, confused, terrified, and yet not a shrieking idiot like a lot of horror flick protagonists. She does utter a few great shrieks, especially her absolutely bone-chilling screams during the aforementioned "heavy slasher" scene, but for the most part the power of her acting came in her realistic portrayal of how a normal person would react to these extremely abnormal events happening around her.

I highly recommend this film to anyone who's looking for a mostly-quiet horror flick with a good, philosophical spin. Major props to the filmmakers who pulled this off on such a low budget. For what it aims to do it's truly in league with the best.

I thought I was watching Groundhog Day. Lauren Currie Lewis was fantastic as the girl who was reliving her murder over and over.

This is like a thinking man's horror film. You really don't know what is happening for a while. Is she crazy? It is obvious that it is not real, but what is going on?

There were some bloody parts, and one really gory scene, but most of it was like a thriller.

This was the real thing without all the special effects - except for the gory part.

Check this one out.

Salvage is about a killer that gets his just deserts. The cover made me a little uncomfortable, so it took me a while to pick it up. It starts out with the star, a typical teen age girl trying to start her life after high school. She has a job and a boyfriend with a truck and she also goes to college. As the movie rolls along you get little hints about what's going on. But the same day keeps repeating with bad results that only she can remember. Flashbacks and visions get so confusing it starts to detract from the movie until they begin to let the secret loose. A good pertinent sound track that wasn't overpowering as some low budget films tend to do. A nice twist at the end makes it an unusual film well worth seeing.

When a film truly concentrates on story, story, and oh yeah, story, you don't mind that it isn't big budget. And this film delivers. And don't get me wrong; there IS some gore, and really weird special effects, but never done gratuitously. The tension and the unraveling is what gets you; all in an hour and twenty minutes! But, it is the ending that really delivers. The film keeps delivering these ominous, nightmare-like sequences, always turning back in on itself, until the heinous ending when all the strings are tied up. And you with it. It's literally like someone throws a glass of cold water in your face.

Be prepared to be haunted for a while by a truly great horror classic that is destined to be remembered and spread by word-of-mouth.

Kudos to the Crook brothers; they are gonna deliver some really great films along the way.

I can't bring myself to write unnecessarily harsh and negative things about this film, but it's definitely a little too ambitious for its own good. With a title like "Gruesome" (at least, in Europe that's what it's called) and a plot summary that mentions a sadistic serial killer, the absolute last thing you expect to see is a psychological thriller that is reminiscent to "Groundhog Day" instead of to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". I saw this film amidst a boisterous and enthusiast crowd at the Belgian Horror & Fantasy Festival and needless to say nobody expected to see a psychological mind-exercise that serves a complex network of clues, twists and red herrings that all lead to a supernatural type of denouement that requires quite a lot of puzzling skills. And yet nonetheless, Jeff and Josh Crook surely deserve some respect and admiration for their film, as it undoubtedly holds the potential to grow out and become a modest cult-sleeper hit within a handful of years. The atmosphere is often quite terrifying, the film's structure is engaging to say the least and the climax is more than inventive enough to raise debates & discussions among avid horror fans. The tagline already reveals the premise of the film and immediately clarifies the similarities with the aforementioned 90's classic "Groundhog Day". "What if every day you relived your own murder?". When college student Claire Parker finishes her night shift as a gas station employee and awaits to be picked up by her boyfriend Jimmy, she meets the sinister Duke Desmond, who offers her a ride home in Jimmy's truck. He then brutally attacks Claire and drags her down to the basement of her house. The next morning, she wakes up and the events simply appear to be a disturbingly realistic dream. But all the horrible things happen again and again, indicating Claire is trapped inside an inescapable nightmare. Vague help from people close to her, like a befriended police detective and her own mother, eventually lead Claire to discover the true nature of the nightmarish cycle she's trapped it. I can't tell you too much about the twist at the end, of course, but it's quite staggering. Even though the final revelation raises more questions than it answers and causes you to skeptically play the movie again in your head, it's a horrific and ingenious finale that sticks to you. The pacing is occasionally slow, however, and at some times the confusing plot isn't compelling enough to force you to remain attentive and/or open-minded for new clues. "Gruesome" may not be as gruesome as I initially hoped, but it still features some effective shocks and awry images, most notably the sequences in which the killer savagely beats up Claire and drags her to her final resting place. Lead actress Lauren Currie Lewis is a talented young actress, and even if she doesn't get successful, she can always consider a second career as Alicia Silverstone's stunt double. The facial expressions and voices of the two actresses are almost identical. Chris Ferry's menacing performance as the robust killer is terrific as well. All in all, recommended with caution.