[Gnaw]
Plot:Six friends vacationing in the heart of the english countryside soon find themselves as the main course for a sadistic family of cannibals who are set on putting their guests on the menu.

Cast:Sara Dylan, Rachel Mitchem, Gary Faulkner, Julia Vandoorne, Hiram Bleetman, Oliver Squires, Nigel Croft-Adams, Carrie Cohen, Jennifer Wren.

My Thoughts:Very A-GNAW-ing

Review:How many horror movies begin with the sentence..."a group of friends vacationing in the countryside"? And how many of those movies have an end result of some twisted hicks murdering the aforementioned vacationers? It seems at this stage, about a thousand. "Gnaw", is Europe's latest attempt at their own personal brand of redneck horror. Proving once again that the way most americans view the south and it's inhabitants, is the way most Europeans view their countryside, and it's inhabitants.

This film plays by the rules so bad it hurts. We get the obligatory opening scene of some poor hapless person being tortured, and then that is followed up with a group of naive youngsters heading to the English countryside. A trip which, beyond smashing into a cat, isn't very eventful. They soon arrive at an inn, where they find some eats. The eats however are not exactly fit for human consumption. Mostly because they are in fact....made of humans! But the stupid kids fail to notice this, so they dig in anyways.

Soon, a strange old woman who owns the place shows up, and if your spidey-sense is tingling right now, because you suspect the old woman is part of the great "rural conspiracy", well then you're correct! See, this is how predictable this film is. So from there, the movie just wastes a bunch of time, prepping these kids for a good old-fashioned slaughter. And the viewer gets bored in record time. Sure, "Gnaw" is bloody, gory, sick, and twisted, but that does not a good horror movie make.

Horror films these days, especially in the indie leagues, the filmmakers seem to think this subgenre is their ticket to fame. I'd be so bold to call it "whoring out". Much like actresses would screw a producer or director to get a part in a picture, indie filmmakers seem to settle for killer-psychobilly material for their freshman efforts. Not sure why. Maybe they're cheaper to make? I mean who needs special effects, explosions, and the like for what pretty much is an English "TCM" remake?

All you need are some creepy looking obese people, or creepy-looking people in general, some sharp objects, some young white kids, a token minority, and viola, your first movie is born! Sadly, this seems to be the case all too often, and this subgenre has become super annoying. Especially because there's not much new stuff which can be done with it. Whether's it's an american film, English film, Irish film, Russian film, or what have you.

Honestly, the last movie I saw which strayed down the path of psycho-billy material, and I found to be a good movie was "Frontieres". But considering "Frontieres" was the best killer-redneck flick I had seen since "Wrong Turn" back in 2003, and "Frontieres" was a 2007 release, that is not very good. These films are such a mirror image of each other, that a stand-out comes along once every four years or more. SO why not move on to more original material?

If you're looking for anything original in "Gnaw", you might wanna think twice. I've seen paint-drying that's more original than this film. It gets so bad that there's even a scene where two of the idiot kids stop on the side of the road to play tag, and the boyfriend blindfolds his girlfriend, and leaves her alone while he goes to hide somewhere. Are you kidding me? You can pretty much guess what happens to these two morons after that. The killers in the movie aren't even the least bit cool either.

Just two dirtball-looking redneck types with bad teeth, and horrific looks. Indeed, just as I expected. Just like I expected everyone to meet a gruesome end, just like I expected one of the kids to drink a glass of unidentified liquid only to find out it's poison, just like I expected the old lady who ran the inn to be in on the plot, you see where I'm going with this? "Gnaw" is hyper-boring, hyper-predictable, and hyper worthless. The film is quite short though, barely clocking in at 80 minutes...BARELY.

So if your curiosity gets the best of you, and you decided to check this lame slasher movie out, atleast too much of your precious time won't be wasted. Honestly, these filmmakers need to take a lesson from people like Neil Marshall, to learn how UK horror is done.

Positives:The moment the end credits began rolling. Lots of blood and gore.

Negatives:Lame killers, hyper-stale story, the cannibal thing, and the people-eating-food-made-up-of-human-flesh thing...is getting played out. It really shows in this film. Annoying and stupid characters, and a scary ending, scary because it suggests a possible sequel to this trash!

Overall:No stars out of four.





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