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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Exploitation > Sexploitation > Chaos (2005)

Chaos (2005)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Film: C

 

 

In the 1960s and 1970s, we had our cycles of exploitation and Horror films that pushed the limits of disgust and what the audience could stomach, and those films hold up in effectiveness because they had points to make and reflected their times very well.  Many are cult films, while others are classics.  Those films also had political points of view that were interesting and uncompromising in their bold graphicness to put the dark side of human nature on screen, no matter how dumb they got.  Writer/director David DeFalco has made a film in that form and based on a 1970s serial killer with Chaos (2005).

 

The film claims to be “the most brutal movie ever made” and the director/bodybuilder might even believe this, but despite a couple of brutal scenes, it is ultimately a pale imitation of The Last House On The Left, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I Spit On Your Grave.  The difference is that they were made with more skill, were more original, even more brutal, has better acting and prove that merely making your narrative so enclosed that the victims cannot escape is not sufficient enough to make such a film work.

 

Like some such older films, this one opens with text about how it is a warning to parents and the public about teen abduction, because 24-hour-news stations obsessing about JonBenet and Polly Klass mighty make us think only younger women are abused and murdered.  How stupid of us.  Roger Ebert actually took this film seriously enough to be offended, but since Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) troubled him, he can’t handle any subjection unless he wrote it as in Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.

 

Ultimately, though the scenes are brutal, the film is idiotically misogynistic.  The girls go to a party and because they happen to go somewhere with some guy, they therefore must be raped, abused and killed.  They did not even have pre-marital sex with a boy friend!

 

To make things worse, the worst scenes are more like a bad snuff or pseudo-snuff film than anything having to do with a narrative.  Yes, going with strangers can be a bad thing, but with total Blair Witch idiocy, it seems all thrown together and the acting is both overdone & underwhelming.  DeFalco mistakes wrestling-style yelling for psychotic behavior which renders his “most brutal movie ever made” claim a joke.  Why, in terms he may understand, its just frontin’.

 

A truly brutal film where evil wins out is beyond cutting up and brutalizing some bodies.  If you see films by Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket) or Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo) that really understand human nature and portray its inhumanity, they are far more effective than hacking some violence together with half a story.  Another problem is that any attempt to portray the 1970s is a big failure and even at their cheapest and lowest budget, films that tried to show reality before mass media (even when they were hokey like the Sunn Classics) could at least be enjoyed within their own confines.  At 73 minutes, this film cannot establish anything and ultimately is an expose about DeFalco’s confusions than any cautionary tale or skillful filmmaking.  At best, it is an interesting and overdone failure, albeit a sometimes very graphic one.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is weak and lame, even though some of the footage is letterboxed in the featurette.  Detail and color are an issue, but it is passably watchable.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is barely stereo and is a more recent recording, but nothing to write home about.  Extras include a tour of the L.A. Coroner’s “Crypt” with the director, then producer Steven Jay Bernheim joins DeFalco for a full length audio commentary and unintentionally hilarious segment where the two respond to Roger Ebert’s negative review of the film (dubbed a controversy by them) in a real hoot that makes Ebert look bad and them worse.  As a matter of fact, it is better than the film.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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