Well, I don’t want the last 90 minutes of my life back, which is more than I can say for Hostel. This is pretty much the same movie, except it doesn’t try to be funny.
After a nifty opening still shot of the five friends who go to Japan for vacation, which slowly gets covered over with blood splotches with skulls scratched in where the heads of those who died were (yes, the deaths and survivals are telegraphed immediately, but it’s not like anyone watches splatter movies for the plot twists), we meet Mike, Darren, Emily, Linda, and Redhead (can’t remember her name, too lazy to look it up, don’t really care, she dies…hey, you can look somewhere else if you want tight quality control). They’ve come to Japan for the dark side of tourist entertainment, and find it when Mike knocks over the drinks of some yakuza.
With the help of a local named Miles (a Japanese name if ever I’ve heard one), they escape, but decide against Miles’s warnings they head into a porno theater down the street. Splitting up like good splatter flick fodder, and acting excessively stupid like only bad screenwriting can deliver, they discover that they’re being filmed, and that the gory pictures of naked dead girls hanging in the bathrooms were taken in the very place they hoped to get their jollies.
Miles shows up again, rescuing Final Girl Who Didn’t Show Her Boobs Emily from the evil yakuza, and getting revenge for his cop brother whom they killed earlier that week.
The plot is nonexistent, and so is the character development beyond what you’d expect in this kind of movie, so let’s move on to the squishy stuff. Where Hostel wanted to pretend it was a real movie instead of a splatter flick with almost no splatter, terrible jokes, and fake boobies, Live Feed has a more “I’m a stupid movie, but you’re here to see people die, so let’s start pilin’ up those bodies!” attitude. Plus it never tries to be funny, and all the jubblies are pleasantly silicone-free.
Mike gets his arm then his head chopped off. Linda gets impaled through her tits with a katana. Main Yakuza Guy (the only likeable character in the movie aside from Miles, gloriously gnawing the holy living shit out of the scenery with every heavily-accented word that comes out of his mouth) is turned on by his giant machete gimp, and gets his head ripped off with some kind of head-grippy-tearing-off-lever device. Redhead gets a tube shoved down her throat, a poisonous snake dropped down the tube, and her lips are stapled shut. Then she’s disemboweled. Miles is shot to death by Shards (Colin Foo, real actor!), the creepy old man who runs the porno theater. Various yakuza are shot to death, disemboweled, and otherwise hacked to pieces by Miles and his kung-fu vengeance.
There are a few good points. The gore is mostly well-executed, with some downright H.G Lewisian moments of sticky brilliance. We’re not bogged down with any attempts at being anything but trashy fun. The digital video manages to not look like complete home-movie ass like most DV features do.
Unfortunately, the first act drags on waaaaaaayyy too long. The movie is around 80 minutes long, and it doesn’t need to be more than 60. Let’s face it, the pure, unadulterated splatter movie started and ended with two guys named Lewis and Friedman.
I can’t give Live Feed full-on recommendation. Just because I don’t want that part of my life back doesn’t mean I ever want to give it another watch. If you’re in the mood for some cheap, splattery crap and a little T&A, you can do worse. You can also do a lot better. Distinctly meh.
The Moral of the Story: Kids, as annoying as they are, can be pretty damn cool sometimes. On the DVD is a trailer for another splatter flick called
Detour. The trailer is pretty much wall-to-wall kill scenes: nailgun-to-the-face, decapitation, limb-hacking, disemboweling, shooting, etc. Phoenix wandered into the room at this point and sat down on the couch with us. He proceeded to laugh hysterically each time someone was destroyed in a messy fashion on the screen. He is two years old. My son is cooler than you.
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