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| Available at Amazon.com |
One of the most amazing things about Kill Syndrome is just how quickly it lets you know you are going to be in for a long, painful viewing experience. The movie opens with a text crawl setting up the premise. Despite the fact the text is digital, its placement is accompanied by a typewriter sound effect. Not only that, but whoever did the crawl apparently couldn’t be bothered to proofread or even use a spell checker. It’s not like the errors are small ones. If even one person took the time to read the text over mistakes like “bigg” and “wittness” would not be there. The fact those mistakes remain shows an astonishing level of incompetence and apathy on the part of the film makers.
The plot of Kill Syndrome, little as there is, has a twisted family luring young women back to their home to be tortured and killed. You might wonder who these people are or why they are on this killing spree but the movie can’t be bothered to address these questions. All we ever really learn about the family is that one of them (the father) is in a wheelchair and that another (the daughter) is the only one who looks normal enough that she can approach people in public. And that’s about it.
There is one character that actually does get a bit of development. Despite not being introduced until the movie is more than half over, Jamie Lynn is the heroine of the story, or at least the only character we’re ever given a reason to feel anything for. When we first meet Jamie Lynn, she’s in an abusive relationship with a real charmer of a guy who is constantly threatening to beat, and even kill, her if she doesn’t do as he asks.
Eventually, in the movie’s best moment, Jamie Lynn snaps. She grabs a hammer and beats her abusive husband to death. Some of the scene’s impact is lost due to the fact the same cheesy kung-fu movie sound effect is used for hammer blows and punches. Still, in a movie as bad as this, the scene is a breath of fresh air.
Kill Syndrome does deserve some recognition for going to the extreme with its torture scenes. The production values and the acting in those scenes are pretty horrid (apparently the actors thought the best way to act like a crazed killer was to speak in your gruffest voice possible) but the actual torture is brutal. So if you judge your horror movies by the degree of graphic torture inflicted on the victims, you’re in luck. I don’t mind torture scenes in a movie myself but even I have my limits. And it turns out that cutting the fetus out of a pregnant woman and forcing her to eat it is well beyond my personal boundary for good taste (no pun intended).
In addition to the movie’s many other problems, it has no ending. A woman escapes from the killers’ immediate vicinity and the killers pursue her. Does she escape completely? Are the killers brought to justice? Or do they kill her and continue with their rampage? On the first viewing, I had no idea. And if not for the fact I had to review this DVD, I probably would have never found out. If you go back to the beginning of the movie, the ending makes a little bit more sense.
The movie is only 54 minutes long which compounds my belief that the end of this movie is missing. I have a couple of theories as to why this might be. One option is that the original ending was deemed unsuitable for one reason or other (perhaps it was too depressing. Or it made the preceding 54 minutes look like an Oscar-worthy film by comparison) and so it was cut. The other option is that the film makers simply ran out of time and/or money and thus never actually finished the movie. My guess is that is what happened. To make up for the lack of ending, the film makers threw together a text crawl and inserted it at the beginning of the movie.
Never before have I encountered a movie with so few redeeming qualities. Kill Syndrome is a terrible movie, plain and simple.
The video is presented at 1.33:1. It’s grainy and was obviously shot on low-end film stock. The audio is stereo and it’s no better. It’s fortunate this movie has so little meaningful dialog as you’ll have a hell of a time hearing what anyone is saying in most of the scenes.
I’m not sure if Kill Syndrome has any special features. All I know for sure is that none were included on the review copy of the DVD.
I’ve reviewed some bad movies in the past, but Kill Syndrome is in a league of its on. It can’t even be appreciated on a cheese level. The only reason to pick up this film is if you are itching to have a new candidate for your “Worst Movie I’ve Ever Seen” list.
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Brain Damage Films presents Kill Syndrome. Directed by Scott L. Collins and Dwayne King. Starring Bracey, Wendell Smith and Leah Carrol Meyers. Written by Scott L. Collins. Running time: 54 minutes. Rated NR. Released on DVD: <Nov 06, 2007. Available at Amazon.com.
About Trevor MacKay
