Brutal

Director - Ethan Wiley (House II: The Second Story)
Starring - Sarah Thompson (Cruel Intentions 2), Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, From Beyond), and Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes)
Release Date - 2007
Genre - Horror
Tagline - Can't find one
Format - DVD (Personal Collection)

     Horror movies are a dime-a-dozen and it's not hard to find a slew of shitty ones dirt cheap at your local discount stores.  This is one of those films that you can find anywhere for cheap.  I saw it at Wal-Mart on multiple occasions for $5 but never wanted to fork out the cash for it.  I saw that it starred Jeffrey Combs and Michael Berryman, and being a huge fan of Combs, I felt guilty for not buying it.  When I finally caved in and went to grab it, Wal-Mart had stopped selling it.  One day I was going through the unsorted DVDs at Big Lots and found a copy of this film for $3 and grabbed it.  It has been setting on my shelf for over a year and I decided it was time to give it a go.

     The film follows Sheriff Jimmy Fleck (Combs), a family man with a wife and kids, who is preparing for the upcoming elections in hopes he would be re-elected as sheriff.  Sheriff Jimmy is also having an affair with his deputy, Zoe (Thompson).  Zoe is starting to get overly attached to the sheriff and is often parking outside his home.  As the bodies of young girls start to pile up, the adulterous duo fail to see the pattern, however, after another murder they find a flower has been left on each victim.  The deputy soon deducts that each flower found on the victim is the flower the street the girls lived on was named after.  She also believes they are dealing with a serial killer but the sheriff refuses to listen.  When a young couple goes missing and the sheriffs search party turns up empty, the deputy resorts to asking an autistic dog trainer to help by using his bloodhounds.  The two come across two shallow graves with a flower planted over top.  The deputy knows it is the work of the serial killer, but the sheriff is pissed she disobeyed direct orders.  Fearing they his wife will find out about his infidelity, he pays an ex-convict to kill her and make it look like the work of the serial killer.  As the dog trainer and the deputy are working on the case, the deputy is attacked by the ex-convict, but before he can kill her the real killer appears and intervenes.  Zoe knows that the sheriff had payed the convict to kill her and pays him a visit.  After confronting him, while his wife listens nearby, she finds a flower on his porch.  He tells her that the flower is a science project of his sons.  The deputy now knows the killer is a teacher.  The deputy and the dog trainer head for the school, while there the dog trainer spots the pattern that the police has missed.  He can see that the killings are based on the findings of a 12th century mathematician and discovers that Zoe, the deputy, is next on his list.  Just like all bad movies, the killer arrives and a showdown ensues before the serial killer in a sweater vest is gunned down.

     This movie has potential...to put you to sleep. As you can tell from my rating, I will have more bad things to say than good about this film.  This movie tries it's damnedest to be a horror mystery, however, it is hard to be a mystery when you show the killer at the beginning of the movie.  Therefore, the story is horrible and this is probably the first review that I am able to say that.  The story, though thought was applied, fell apart somewhere between paper and the finished product.  The acting is decent by most of the cast and so is the special effects.  Most of the kills are off camera or obscured.  There is a few on camera, and the effects for those are decent, however, a majority are like I previously said.  The film also has a problem with the pacing and dialogue.  The film is stretched way to far and the characters are long winded making for a painstakingly long movie.  I found myself dozing off to sleep many times during the duration of this flick.  My final complaint about this movie, and to me the biggest complaint, is the damn cover art.  Scroll up and study the cover art for a moment and I'll wait here till you return...did you notice the killer on the cover?  That is not the killer in the film.  I was hoping the killer was another Jason clone that used power to butcher his victims.  Instead we get Bill Nye the Psycho Science Guy killing people with garden tools while wearing dress shirts and sweater vests.  Why put him on the cover if he is not in the film?  I recommend finding something else to watch and I'm done writing about this shitflick.