Cornered!

Five people play poker after hours in the upstairs of a liquor store, only to be picked off one by one by a serial killer. Much of the first half is centred around this game, frankly very boring. The acting isn't great, especially Duval as the heroin addict going cold turkey. The temptation to hit the FFWD button was great. Once the killing starts there is an attempt, with some success, to substitute gore for tension. Many slasher fans will feel short changed however, with only one killing near the end producing the gory goods. I guess making a film in pretty much a single location takes skill, so credit to them for trying. Could've been better, I'd pretty much lost interest after the first half.

Cornered! (2009)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pretty bad slasher flick about a serial killer stalking convenient stores in Los Angeles. A store owner and his friends sit down to have a poker game after hours one night and sure enough, the killer shows up and starts to pick them off one by one. There are countless direct-to-DVD horror releases out there so you have to pick them with caution but I decided to give this one a go since Steve Guttenberg has a small part. I'm sure those who grew up watching POLICE ACADEMY wondered what he was up to in his recent movies and this here was my shot of seeing him again but it frankly wasn't worth the trouble. This screenplay is without question one of the strangest I've seen because it features a lot of bums and the reason for this is beyond me. We have the store owner who is obviously a cheap, rude jerk. We have his nephew who runs the cash register and just happens to be a meth head. We've got a prostitute trying to pick up some extra cash. We have one lady who works as a phone sex operator. We even have an overweight guy hooked on donuts. Umm....what the hell? Have we really gotten to the point in horror films where one of the characters needs to be addicted to donuts? I'm not sure if this was meant to be part of the humor but the laughs certainly never work and this is painfully obvious in a scene early one where another bum, this time a homeless man, tries to steal some alcohol. I'm really not sure what the point of this comedy was but it certainly doesn't work but then again neither does the horror or mystery aspects. The killer was rather obvious within the first five minutes so the entire mystery gets flushed right down the toilet. With the comedy and mystery gone you'd think we'd at least get some gory deaths, right? Well, wrong. The violence for the most part is rather tame and the bloodiest scene is actually a quick edit to part of a jelly donut dripping onto a table. The performances in the film were fair and that includes Guttenberg who at least proves he still has some nice comic timing. With that said, CORNERED! is a low-budget slasher film that doesn't work on any level and should certainly be skipped.

This flick was made by first-time director Daniel Moerenhout but is better known in his country and into the music scene as Daniel Maze. The man surely knows what he want, he had a one hit wonder with Scoop in 1999 and made his first so-called flick when he was eleven. One way or another he managed to make his first Hollywood flick. But you really need a teaser to promote your flick so he found Steve Guttenberg of the Police Academy fame. And I must admit, he still has it, he was believable even as the Police Academy wasn't my cup of tea. The others were luckily believable too. I enjoyed the movie but it has a few let downs. First of all, some killings are a bit lame, secondly, it take a while before the movie really starts. You really have to wait almost an hour. Before that you will have a lot of talking, dirty talk and bad manners. Of course there is a bit of black humor mixed in it but not everybody will notice that. Just look at the flying donut... After 30 minutes you will get murder number one but that was really a lame one, combined with again the black humor (the ice cream cones). Somehow it reminded me a bit of The Intruder, the storyline I mean. But after a hour the red stuff starts to flow, some killings become really nasty and one killing is really worth watching, a slo-mo and close up of a victim's slicing. Nice to see. Luckily as a slow builder you get what you are waiting for. It has an open ending but I guess they won't franchise it. The killer itself, well, his mask did remind me of the 80's slasher Blackout and the more unknown Zipperface. Nice flick but you will have to wait to get cornered.

During their nightly poker game a group of lowlifes are terrorized in their own convenience store by a masked killer.

The highlight of this film was obviously James Duval as Jimmy, who is going through heroin withdrawal. He puts on perhaps the best performance of his career. Although I learned to love him in the films of Gregg Araki and in "May", he seems to be starting a second -- even better -- phase of his acting, as seen here and in "Sushi Girl".

While there is little else here that is all that memorable, and some moments seem a bit clichéd or hackneyed, it is not a bad little film. Certainly better than the average lower budget horror film. And it is great to see Steve Guttenberg, a wonderful actor whose time is not yet over.

(2008) Cornered!

HORROR

Co-produced, co- written and directed by Daniel Maze directing a rather low budget, straight to rental crap, about a convenience store owner, getting together with friends and co-workers to play a game of poker located on the room above the store itself, unaware that theirs a serial killer in the midst. If people were to watch enough slasher films, the twist toward the end becomes to be not that much of a twist. As a matter of fact it's totally stupid. And the actor Steve Guttenberg of several movies including "Police Academy" and "Short Circuit" also stars as the beer delivery guy. Bomb.