9/10
The goriest Italian film in years
12 June 2015
Saved from a rape attempt, a woman and her boyfriend take up shelter in their rescuer's house, unaware of the deadly secret they hide within that is soon unleashed upon them with a ferocious vengeance.

This was one of the more impressive and enjoyable Italian slashers in the scene. One of the better elements in here is the general sense of unease and discomfort found within here as it details several different tactics quite successfully. While hinted at somewhat with the early scenes after the rescue, the film begins to really get into the discomfort when it brings their deformed child into this. Looking suitably distressed and gruesome, there's enough off about his behavior and appearance to lead to quite a distinctive feature here, and even more to that point is the discovery scene where they find him hiding in the bedroom after one of the many escape attempts. That fact that there's some rather decent ones in here is another rather enjoyable feature, providing this one with some enjoyable action that keeps it flowing along nicely. Starting with the main escape attempt, where the group is able to get out onto the dirt road which is pretty dark and chilling here, and a secondary attempt here through the woods leads to some pretty chilling stalking scenes in the bushes. This one also manages to set-up some rather intriguing action in here as not only are those thrilling yet there's a lot of other fun times featured elsewhere with these alongside such scenes as the opening car-crash on the highway, the assault in the motor home off in the woods and the final retribution against the gang-members which takes up the entire final half in the house which is over-the-top gory, brutal and just a lot of fun featuring the chainsaw action, cannibal attacks and tons of suspense here with the encounters in the child's bedroom and down in the basement. That all of the action scenes result in tons of gory, bloody and rather inventive kills tops off the film's positives here, as these are enough to hold off the relatively few flaws. The main one here is the rip-off nature of the film during the dinner sequence, which is cribbed so heavily that it never manages to stand on its own because so much of it is shot-for-shot that prevents it from being enjoyable. Beyond that, there's minor problems that don't really amount to much such as the shaking camera preventing a lot of the action in the woods from being clear or the brawl in the garage looking incredibly lame with the weak choreography really taking the sting out of it. Otherwise, this one proved to be a lot of fun and really enjoyable.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity, a rape scene and children-in-jeopardy.
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