Headless

I've taken a long break from the ultra violent flicks and needed something good to pull me back in. Glad I started here. Make to look like a lost slasher film from the heyday of popularity (mid 80s) yet pulls no punches with it's brutality and the disturbing nature of the killer. Given enough backstory into the nameless psycho to know why he does what he does yet let's us still guess where he went from there. It's a wonderfully sick film that will stick with you for a while.

I had never heard about this 2015 movie titled "Headless" prior to sitting down to watch it here in 2024. I figured that it was going to be a horror movie of sorts, given the movie's cover. But I have to admit that I was harboring zero expectations to the movie when I sat down to watch it.

Writers Nathan Erdel and Todd Rigney rather unique storyline and script. It is something that will not find a wider appeal to the general audience, given the graphic contents of the scenes and events in the storyline. But I am sure that there will be horror and gore fans out there that will find enjoyment in the script.

It is a pretty slow paced narrative. I had to check how far into the movie I was at a point, because it felt like I had been sitting through 90 minutes already, and it turned out that I was only 45 minutes into the 85 minutes run time. And I have to say that it was this incredibly slow narrative that killed the movie for me.

Of course I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. And that is actually something that I enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. However, it isn't like you're in for any Award winning performances throughout the course of "Headless". Some of the acting performances were fair enough, I will give the movie that much.

Some of the effects in the movie are good, and they are rather bloody and gory. And that, yes, that definitely spoke very well in favor of the movie, and helped to make the movie all the more bearable to sit through. I would actually say that "Headless" is worth watching for the gory visual effects alone.

It should be noted, however, that "Headless" is a not a movie that is for the faint or those easily offended, because there are some pretty disturbing imagery and scenes throughout the course of the movie.

"Headless" is a low budget movie, and it shows on the screen.

My rating of director Arthur Cullipher's 2015 movie "Headless" lands on a very generous four out of ten stars. Gore, brutality and grotesque imagery can only carry a movie so far.

Two stars only for two reasons: Some of the gore effects are alright, and the first victim and Jess look hot. Everything else in this movie was terrible. I actually really enjoyed Found, because Found has a message it's trying to send out, and the plot really wasn't that bad. This in other hand was nearly plotless.

The plot makes no logic. A mother and her daughter are torturing her child son, because she deemed him as evil, and cuz her husband left him??? That makes zero logic, and then the sister wants to have intercourse with her brother, and she lets him go? The same man she pissed on, and tortured him with her mom, she lets him go?? Of course he is going to kill you, where's your logic?

Then the screaming, we get constant scenes of the killer just screaming for no reason, and i had to turn the volume down to nothing, and he still yells like a infant. In this movie you'll see eyeballs being pulled out, about 5 times! You know instead of having 5 average eyeball scenes, why not focus and make one good eyeball scene that looks realistic like in Guinea Pig, that eyeball scene was actually terrifying, or Mai Chan Daily Life eyeball scene.

Lets talk about our victims? None of them have any depth, and none of them have any personality. All of them are there for the sake of being there, and none of them seem to care. They are forced into this movie.

What made Headless a sinister good watch in Found, is it was made as a Snuff Film, it was similar to Guinea Pig, Grotesque and The Butcher, here we got a slasher gore nonsense boredom fest. Hey if you are one of the people that likes crap like The Collector and Crazy Murder and slashers in general, this is for you. As for me, no. Really i just wasted my time with this.

This film was everything that a lover of the slasher sub-genre enjoys: gore, nudity, blood, and limbs being sawed off. The film overall was pretty typical, but it held a few pretty unique tweaks that you don't see very often in a slasher film. I wont give too much away, but just how the killer toys with Jess at the end, and the childhood story throughout the film are cool little bits that made this movie stand out. However, the one complaint that I just can't get over is the sub par acting. Now, not get me wrong, I understand that this was supposed to be a lost 70s slasher film (which were notorious for bad acting), but it just got distracting. If you haven't seen the film Found, which this movie is more or less from, I would suggest watching it as it supplements Headless as a whole.

I write this review as a horror fan, seeking to inform other horror fans of what to expect with this film.

I'll be brief: like so many others here, I am drawn to extreme cinema, with visceral, shocking sequences of gore and violence. Honestly, I'm even down for cheesy, B-Movie style special effects. I love practical special effects, I love slashers, I love horror, and I love films that seek to push the limits. Naturally, Headless made its way onto my radar by seemingly checking all of these boxes. Like others, I had heard a lot of hype about this film, and was very excited to get my hands on it. (Minor spoilers ahead)

First the positive: The first 10ish minutes of this film are truly shocking and captivating moments of violent cinema. There are some unforgettable images in there, such as the killer sitting underneath the blood pouring from a body above him, the removal and eating of eyes, the infamous "head-hump", etc. The grain-y, 70s film visuals really work here, and the vibe is chilling and effective. A grim, fantastic start.

Now the bad: Not only does the film go absolutely nowhere here, but it's shown you most of its tricks and surprises right out of the gate. There's more eye-eating, more decapitation, more severed-head-copulation, but its nowhere near as effective as the first sequence. The directing gets really questionable here too, especially during kill scenes (disorienting is one thing...sloppy is another entirely). There's a backstory, but its pretty boring and predictable. There are other characters, but the cheesy acting and dialogue rarely comes off as funny/charming, and is almost always forgettable. It becomes clear almost immediately that this idea cannot sustain a full film. And yet here we are.

At the end of the day, this film's cardinal sin is simple: it's boring. Despite all of the gore and torture, this film will really struggle to capture your attention, and for a film like this, that's really not a good sign. It just goes to show that there needs to be SOMETHING more in order for a film to be truly shocking, sick and scary, and that "something" is not recycling the same 5 special effects tricks over and over.

The first 10 minutes are worth your time. After that, switch to something else. Truly wasted potential.