Reaper

Boisterously entertaining, this low budget throwback slasher has bodacious hottie Natalie (Shayla Beesley) riskily hitch-hiking the dusty back roads scamming on lecherous creeps for their dough to dutifully pay mom's medical bills, and after she reluctantly accepts a ride with greasy sleazer salesman Bill (Jake Busey) they both fatefully end up at the ominously monikered 'Last Chance Hotel', a deliciously doomy locale, this heart-broken hotel amusingly replete with visibly disturbed, batso bonkers, bible-blathering, doom-auguring receptionist Caine (Justin Henry). The local news dramatically report the extraordinarily lurid details concerning the supernaturally revivified mass serial killer 'Reaper' allegedly continuing his murderous modus operandi of super-sanguineous sinner slaying from beyond the grave!

Director Philip Shih's splattery shocker provides electrifying scenes of sublime midnight movie madness as noble-hearted, machete-weilding drug mule Danny Trejo and the monstrously beleaguered guests of the bloodily besieged motel do desperate battle with the high-wattage, hell-fired 'Reaper'. Consistently compelling due to the engaging performances of a damn fine cast, with Trejo, Beesley, Henry, and Busey's boozy curb crawling creep all being far more nuanced protagonists than the usually drearily disposable knife fodder. 'Reaper' is one eminently diggable B-Horror, with pacey direction, a creepier-than-thou location, pluckier than average final girl, and this red-eyed, reprehensibly rampaging, riotously revenging Reaper is guaranteed to scythe his wanton way into the contemporary slasher pantheon! While I thoroughly enjoyed 'Reaper', I could have done without the ceaseless grimacing of ex-footie thug Vinnie Jones, a boorish amateur with all the subtlety of a sinkhole! 'Reaper' is a pleasingly gritty B-crime horror hybrid that references Renny Harlin's cult classic 'Prison'.

Following a score of strange incidents, a group of criminals hiding out at a reclusive hotel find their troubled hitchhiker target is the least of their problems when a supernatural being begins taking out everybody one-by-one.

This here was quite the bland and overall uninteresting effort. The biggest issue here holding this one back is the fact that so much of what happens here is just not that interesting or enjoyable, which is mainly due to how this one starts off. The majority of the first half here is dedicated to thoroughly uninteresting by being more of a lame crime/drama rather than straight-forward horror film. By focusing on her troubled life-style and willingness to utilize her femininity to get the drop on both guys which allows her to continue being such a tease to everyone makes for such an overly bland offering. Hardly anything about this section works well in determining this one as being much of a horror film with the three different plot lines coming into play here that makes this one drag out the horror elements which come so late into the film that there's little opportunities for horror elements even before taking those elements on throughout the rather extended series of stalking scenes in here. These are just so overlong that it ends up really ruining the few attacks at slasher rhythms with the fact that the killer is so underdeveloped and completely clueless about his origins that he's quite unimposing long before having his first appearance pop up in the second half of this one. Still, once it does get into some of the more involved sequences here this one becomes quite a bit of fun with the fact that there's some genuinely fun sequences in here, from the rather tense stalking done in the middle of the hotel where the crackling bolts of electricity that signify its presence burst into the middle of the scene and make for a creepy time as it begins stalking the unwary groups still in the midst of their petty arguing and allowing for some tense moments, as well as the final confrontation in the church which has some creepy moments. Along with some fine action in the different races to get to safety throughout here, there's some fun to be had but it's mostly pretty flawed.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and drug use.

Review: This movie wasn't worth the paper that it was written on. It took over an hour for anything to really happen and even then it wasn't that great. The acting was really bad from the leading lady, who just went around stealing anything that she could get her hands on, and the storyline was ridiculous. I really don't know how the hitchhiker got away with half the things she was doing and the whole Reaper concept was bloody stupid. Personally, I just lost interest after a while and I just couldn't wait until they all got killed off. Terrible!

Round-Up: The poster looked promising, but this is yet another movie were the people on the poster wasn't really in the movie that much. Vinnie Jones only had a couple of scenes and Danny Trejo doesn't come into the movie until the last half an hour. Although both actors are on the poster facing each other, they don't even have any scenes together so that must have just been a selling point. Anyway, there isn't anything good to say about the film so my recommendation is not to bother wasting your time.

I recommend this movie to people who are into there cheap thrillers about a girl who goes around stealing from people who would give her a lift and ending up in a hotel were there is a Reaper looking fellow killing people in a hotel. 1/10

Went into this expecting very little but was quite surprised to discover that it was far less gory and way more interesting than initially suspected. I think the advertising here actually didn't do justice to the film because it comes off as a cliché slasher romp from the marketing but it's actually a twisty crime thriller with some supernatural shades. The cast really holds it together nicely, creating an ensemble of refreshingly flawed characters who are playing a dangerous game of survival of the fittest. Genre vets Trejo and Jones are always welcome additions to this kind of material, and they do as good a job as can be expected. Overall "Reaper" isn't quite what was expected, in a good way.

Given the fact that this 2014 movie titled "Reaper" was a horror movie, of sorts, that I hadn't already seen, and given my love of all things horror, of course I had to check out the movie. Sure, I had virtually no idea what I was in for here, so director Philip Wen-Han Shih had every opportunity to entertain and impress me.

Writers Mark James and James Jurdi didn't exactly put together an exciting or riveting storyline. 30 minutes into the ordeal and nothing interesting still had happened, and I have to admit that I was good and ready to call it quits. But I opted to endure, especially since Danny Trejo hadn't been in the movie yet at that point.

Now, I was under the impression that "Reaper" was a horror movie. But it was not, not unless you consider a boring script as being passable for horror.

There are a few familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Danny Trejo, Vinnie Jones and Jake Busey. The acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact that the script was a boring pile of rubbish.

This is most definitely not a movie that I would in any way recommend you to squander 88 minutes on watching. It just simply wasn't worth the effort. And it certainly is not a movie that will ever find its way back to my screen a second time.

My rating of director Philip Wen-Han Shih's 2014 movie "Reaper" lands on a generous three out of ten stars, and that is mostly because of the production value of the movie.