Crushed starts as Ray (Henrik Norlén) turns up for work one morning & sees a young attractive woman named Tara Wood (Natalie Dickinson) struggling with some heavy luggage, Ray offers to help & the two introduce themselves to each other. Ray is a recovering alcoholic & after a row with his girlfriend Maddy (Caitlin Wehrie) goes on a drink binge & ends up on the side of the street drunk, Tara just happens to be there & helps Ray to his feet & they both go home together where they have sex. The next day & Ray tells Tara that it was a one night stand & he doesn't love her or want to be her boyfriend, Tara doesn't take rejection that well & goes psycho on Ray. Tara kills Ray's boss, Ray's friends & finally targets Maddy in an attempt to make Ray love her...
More commonly known as She's Crushed this was photographed, edited, written & directed by Patrick Johnson & after having just watched it I was reminded of the psycho thriller Fatal Attraction (1987) with a one night stand turning into an absolute nightmare for one man who slept with the wrong woman, the main difference is that Crushed has no depth & writer, director Johnson tries to turn a twisted love story into a Saw (2004) style torture film. While Fatal Attraction had great depth & a real resonance Crushed doesn't, in fact the character's are paper thin & the plot is wholly predictable from start to finish. There's some sub-plot about an old woman in a mental institution that never seems to have any relevance to anything else, a black and white opening sequence that again seems totally pointless & a central story that never moved me. Tara's victims barely get any screen time, Ray is unlikable, Tara's back-story is never explored & she manages to murder an awful lot of people without any suspicion falling on her whatsoever. At one hour & twenty five minutes long the pace is alright but the first thirty odd minutes are quite dull, things pick up by the end as Tara kidnaps Maddy & Ray but it's too little too late.
The film looks alright, while not badly made there's little in the way of style here. A lot of IMDb user comments state how gory Crushed is, well there's lots of fake blood splashed around but very little actual gore. There's a shot of a drill going into someone's forehead, a woman's feet are tortured & her toes chopped off but otherwise it's just lots of fake blood splashed over people's faces or over the floor or walls. Apparently actress Natalie Dickinson recorded several video dairies which were posted on YouTube under the channel 'TaraisCrushed' which described her descent into madness, maybe some of the story deficiencies & empty plot are addressed here & Tara's feelings, thoughts & background are covered but who is going to sit through all of those before actually watching the film? It just seems a bit pointless to me.
Apparently shot in Dallas in Texas, reasonably well made there's not a lot to the film to be honest & it does feel empty & repetitive at times. The acting isn't great, Natalie Dickinson does alright I suppose but everyone else is pretty bad.
Crushed is a Fatal Attraction rip-off that goes for bloody horror rather than tense psychological thrills & it just descends into badly staged set-pieces. Not a film that I could recommend, Crushed doesn't quite know what it wants to be, either a psychological thriller or gory brutal horror, & ends up satisfying as neither.
More commonly known as She's Crushed this was photographed, edited, written & directed by Patrick Johnson & after having just watched it I was reminded of the psycho thriller Fatal Attraction (1987) with a one night stand turning into an absolute nightmare for one man who slept with the wrong woman, the main difference is that Crushed has no depth & writer, director Johnson tries to turn a twisted love story into a Saw (2004) style torture film. While Fatal Attraction had great depth & a real resonance Crushed doesn't, in fact the character's are paper thin & the plot is wholly predictable from start to finish. There's some sub-plot about an old woman in a mental institution that never seems to have any relevance to anything else, a black and white opening sequence that again seems totally pointless & a central story that never moved me. Tara's victims barely get any screen time, Ray is unlikable, Tara's back-story is never explored & she manages to murder an awful lot of people without any suspicion falling on her whatsoever. At one hour & twenty five minutes long the pace is alright but the first thirty odd minutes are quite dull, things pick up by the end as Tara kidnaps Maddy & Ray but it's too little too late.
The film looks alright, while not badly made there's little in the way of style here. A lot of IMDb user comments state how gory Crushed is, well there's lots of fake blood splashed around but very little actual gore. There's a shot of a drill going into someone's forehead, a woman's feet are tortured & her toes chopped off but otherwise it's just lots of fake blood splashed over people's faces or over the floor or walls. Apparently actress Natalie Dickinson recorded several video dairies which were posted on YouTube under the channel 'TaraisCrushed' which described her descent into madness, maybe some of the story deficiencies & empty plot are addressed here & Tara's feelings, thoughts & background are covered but who is going to sit through all of those before actually watching the film? It just seems a bit pointless to me.
Apparently shot in Dallas in Texas, reasonably well made there's not a lot to the film to be honest & it does feel empty & repetitive at times. The acting isn't great, Natalie Dickinson does alright I suppose but everyone else is pretty bad.
Crushed is a Fatal Attraction rip-off that goes for bloody horror rather than tense psychological thrills & it just descends into badly staged set-pieces. Not a film that I could recommend, Crushed doesn't quite know what it wants to be, either a psychological thriller or gory brutal horror, & ends up satisfying as neither.