CHAOS Director's Cut
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Movie Reviews of CHAOS Director's Cut
Movie Review: Carbon copy of the original Last House on the Left
Summary: 2 Stars
First off I'd like to say that I love Cult Films, Grindhouse Films from the 70's, Obscure Rare Horror, Revenge Movies, Euro-Trash, Asian Imports, Classic Drive-In Movies, Midnight Movies, etc. So this type of film is right up my alley. Yes, in the last 20 minutes or so of the film it does become a carbon copy of the original Last House on the Left BUT the filmmakers do throw in a twist ending. The film over all was brutal but not as brutal or well executed as [...]. Both far superior revenge films. The opening "message" seemed kind of silly as if the filmmakers were trying to justify the brutality they were about to subject you too. The torture did make me squirm at times but again, Hood Has Eyez knocks this out the box. Recommended for those who like rape/revenge films.Movie Review: CHECK OUT MAYA BAROVICH IN...
Summary: 2 Stars
One of the girls who plays a victim in this film also showed up in the first season of the Jamie Kennedy Experiment as the girl he played a dating game joke on. That segment on the first season is hilarious and a little scary in parts. Much scarier than anything in this film.
As for this film, yes, it's a copy of a much better film but instead of railing against it, just ignore it. There are worse films out there and the more attention films like this and Hostel get, the more we'll see of them. I'm tired of filmmakers trying to outdo and outgross one another in the torture department. I'd like a good story too.
Movie Review: Exploitation of the worst kind
Summary: 1 Stars
Dave DeFalco, the "director", should be charged with plagiarism. This film is essentially Last House on the Left without the power, wit, and intellect of its inspiration. A number of people have tried to remake Last House on the Left including Night Train Murders, but they each fail because they mistakenly think Last House is moving simply because of its graphic violence. They miss the subtleties that make Wes Craven's movie effective.
This is movie is trash, plain and simple. I love bad movies - Herschell Gordon Lewis in particular made some terrible, fun, and frequently hilarious movies, but they didn't take themselves too seriously. When he was making Blood Feast or Wizard of Gore, he KNEW he was making cheesy camp - that's why those movies are so great. I also love extreme movies. Irreversible and The Piano Teacher are two of the most extreme films around dealing with difficult subject matter in a very thoughtful, intriguing way. They don't cross into exploitation because they rely on ideas, not simply a string of graphic violence or perversion. Chaos attempts to be a serious film and thus fails on the camp scale. It sometimes tries to act as though it has a point, a message if you will, but no - it's really about the torture and rape and the directors know it.
In an unprecedented move, the directors provide a featurette to basically say "our movie doesn't suck!" I've never seen such posturing from a couple of hacks. They put up the flimsiest, stupidest arguments imaginable. The funny thing is that they're so serious when they're defending their move. The simple fact that they feel the need to defend it speaks volumes. A work of art speaks for itself.
The movie is technically decent. The shots are in focus, the sound is fine, the color is ok. It's filmed in a very simple, point-the-camera-at-the-action style. Some of the actors are decent. The parents seem like they know what they're doing and they're actually the best part of the movie until the idiotic script requires the wife to suddenly become hysterical and useless. The script is just as dumb as can be. It serves the lowest level of basic communication possible. The lead character is creatively named Chaos, like the movie title. Clever.
I wouldn't mind the graphic violence if it had a point. Irreversible is extremely graphic during the club scene and then again during the rape in the tunnel, but it's filmed in an artistic manner, keeping a respectful distance. You can tell immediately that Chaos is exploitation from the way the camera gleefully lingers on the carnage. When the first girl is being attack in the woods, the camera does one of those slow pans across her body making it look "appealing" if you can ignore the things being done to it. The point of the scene should be the horror against humanity, not "isn't it cool that she's naked?" I don't mind extremely graphic violence, but to present it such a humorless, pointless, exploitative manner is pretty reprehensible.
That said, it IS the sickest film I've ever seen (and I've seen them all). Last House on Dead End Street, which is supposed to be tantamount to snuff has nothing on this. If all you want is a high "yuck factor", this ought to do it. Perhaps Pasolini's Salo has a more prolonged type of violence and perversion, but it never crosses the line as Chaos does. Again, I welcome filmmakers to go to extremes, but graphic violence for the sake of graphic violence is meaningless.
Some critics have mistakenly called the film "effective". I challenge that the film is too stupid to be effective. There are too many distractions. One minute you're marveling at how uncreative the script is, the next minute you're wondering how someone could rip off Last House so thoroughly. In order for a film to be effective, we should probably care about the characters. The two girls are so stupid in their actions and so annoying with their constant screaming that it becomes hard to care about them. Besides that, we know they're rape/murder fodder from the beginning. They never have a chance and, since we know how it will end because it follows the formula so exactly, we can't connect with them at all. Their purpose is not to develop, change, or learn a lesson - their purpose is to be killed in the woods.
Finally, this brings us to the "message". The film begins with a statement from the director informing us that this is a cautionary tale, a public service if you will. What's the message? If you're so stupid as to follow some strange guy deep into the woods to buy drugs from his buddies that you get killed? What teenage girl doesn't know that? I wonder who the audience is. According to the statement of purpose, the target audience is clearly young women. How many young women do you think decided to go to this film? Now, how many young men do you think went to this? For a film supposedly targeted at a female audience for the purpose of "warning" them about the dangers of bad people, it sure seems aimed at the male audience. Do the filmmakers really think women really want lingering shots of a dying woman's breasts? There can be no possible explanation except that it's an appeal to the (secret) intended audience of men. Don't believe what the filmmakers say - it's not a cautionary tale, it's a glorification of brutal violence and extreme cruelty.
I would avoid this DVD at all costs. These guys really don't deserve your money. If you're curious, rent this from Netflix or something. Chances are you won't be in the mood for it again for a while anyway. As a musician/composer, I tend to give artists the benefit of the doubt. I believe that most artists set out to make a quality work with the best intentions (whether these intentions are realized is quite another manner). However, I don't feel that was the case here. I think two talentless people decided to make a truly awful film. Don't support them by buying this DVD. I know many will be curious to see what could possibly be so terrible. There is no replay value whatsoever. Rent this or, preferably, avoid it altogether.
Movie Review: Poorly-Made, Very Weak Writing.
Summary: 1 Stars
By now everybody knows that "Chaos" is supposedly a violent, unrestrained film. It IS violent, and yet restrained, it's one of those films that promises a lot with it's hype and premise, and in this case delivers something FAR below expectations. You know your production is in trouble when the director is a guy who calls himself "The Demon," in this case David "The Demon" DeFalco. Oh DeFalco has spent a lot of time and energy defending the piece as a look at "real life" and pure evil blah blah blah, claiming this is the most brutal movie ever made eventhough Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ" outdoes the film in pure blood and violence, DeFalco and his producer have also been waging a childish print and video debate with Roger Ebert who rightfully gave the movie zero stars. At the end of the day what brings "Chaos" down isn't the subject matter, but the mere fact that this is pretty poor filmmaking. First there's the look of the movie, it looks like a straight to video production with really simple, pale lighting that doesn't even make the movie look sinister. This really looks more like a first term student film by students still learning to use the equipment. The camera work consists of a few hand held shots and pretty basic framing, nothing too intense. The actors are also very unconvincing, they deliver either performances that come off as too cheesy or too overdone. The biggest problem here though is the script which is so poorly crafted. Characters are cardboard cut-outs with no personality, they merely exist for the purposes of running, grinning, screaming and looking tough or scared. The dialogue is laughable and the story advances with such a choppy, simple rhythm that we can't take any of it seriously. The violence itself only reaches a shocking climax in two scenes, this is not a non-stop orgy of death and killing, in fact, I found the movie to be quite restrained. Oh sure the nipple slicing scene is pretty grotesque, and the final murder in the woods is also birthed from a disturbing use of the imagination, but a more intense, graphic movie would be Meir Zarchi's "I Spit On Your Grave" which makes "Chaos" look like child's play, or Pasolini's "Salo" based on the Marquis De Sade's "120 Days Of Sodom." DeFalco also needs to be a little more original, movie buffs are already signaling out all the obvious "Last House On The Left" rip-offs present in the movie. I see the film more as one of those cheesy attempts by a guy who thinks he's tapped into reality at trying to make "something real" when in fact it doesn't feel real at all. Evil is a topic best looked at when it's done with a balanced blend of violence and psychology as in "The Silence Of The Lambs," "Seven," "The Exorcist," and horror works best when it is attempted with a real sense of the disturbing and gritty as with the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." "Chaos" is more of a geek show, with scenes of pain, breasts and slobbering villains in a B-movie setting. This is not the most brutal movie ever made, or one of the best, or one worth checking out.Movie Review: Socially Dangerous Cinema
Summary: 1 Stars
Edit October 11, 2009:
Andrew D. MacEwen: What the HELL are you blathering on about? Quit circling the airport and bring the plane in for a landing (read: get to the point). Better yet, why not actually give the rest of us your honest, critical opinion about the movie? Since you took the time to so painstakingly lambaste the rest of us for our opinions, don't you think that yours should be fair game as well? Or are you afraid to accept what you so liberally give out?
Original comments:
This is a sick, reprehensible film, made all the worse by the produer and director's claim that the film has some social "message". Two girls who go to a rave in the woods in search of E meet up with a gang of thugs and get violated and brutally murdered. Thugs wind up in the house of one of the girls and bloodshed ensues. Wes Craven should sue. But the social "message," as stated by the filmakers in the extras, is that the girls get into trouble when they leave the party. That's it. Fin. This is their argument for lingering almost sociopathically on the extreme, brutal violence that befalls these girls. This goes well beyond exploitation--of which the best films were always able to view the violence with an ironic wink and a sense of fun--and into unhealthy territory. The movie is incredibly nasty and mean, hopeless and nihilistic. Writer/Director David De Falco actually seems to take some pleasure in the atrocities he forces onto the viewer, and that, to me, is incredibly dangerous. I think Ebert was spot-on with his now-famous question: "What place does pure evil have in film?" A movie to avoid at all costs. I hope David De Falco is never again allowed behind a camera.