The Cutting Room
Directed by Warren Dudley
Starring: Parry Glasspool, Lucy-Jane Quinlan, Lydia Orange
June 2015
Reviewed by Jess Landry
Sometimes when you start a movie, you know within the first ten seconds if what you’re watching is going to be the best thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life or a giant, flaming turd with fireworks shooting out of it. Care to wager a guess where The Cutting Room falls?
Starting slower than an obese snail, the opening credits play out to an unsuitable (tone-wise) old-timey song about food while footage of a girl chained to a table being disemboweled by some reject member of Slipknot keeps popping up.
Once that’s over with, we’re introduced to the three stars of this found footage-style stinker. Honestly, I don’t remember their names so let’s call them Screaming Girl #1, Screaming Girl #2 and Disposable Boyfriend (DB for short). The trio has been assigned to create a documentary for their film class, but they need to document themselves making their documentary as per their professor’s instructions (if you’re even paying the most minute amount of attention to these first few bits, you can clearly tell who the masked evildoer is).
Anyway, the gang decides to tackle the subject of cyberbullying, focusing on the disappearance of the girl from the opening sequence. But here’s the thing about all of this: everyone assumes the dead girl is missing and no one has the faintest clue that there’s a murderer mucking about. Because of this, there is no sense of danger to the main characters or to you, the viewer. The point of a horror movie is to be terrified; to root for the heroes and boo the villains, but it’s extremely difficult to empathize when no one knows about the main threat.
That’s probably why the next forty-six minutes of the hour and fifteen minute long film are spent talking, dealing with some shaky camera action, yawning (my bad), three gratuitous ass shots (DB is operating the camera after all) and a series of unfortunate events that lead the trio to an abandoned barracks in the woods where the killer (again, no one knows there’s been an actual murder) has set up shop.
By minute forty-seven, the movie goes straight up Berserker mode. I’m talking DEFCON one, people. The shaky camera action is amped up to seizure-inducing levels as the kids run around the barracks. In the dark. With a flashlight. The sheer amount of off-camera screams reach decibels unbeknownst to humankind. The screen goes pitch black for minutes at a time. And I’m yawning so much my face hurts.
Then, as quickly as it began, the action is over. SPOILER: everyone escapes the barracks unhurt. Awesome. The next logical step for the gang is to head home, ‘cause after escaping the clutches of a murderer (who they still don’t really know is a murderer), the best idea is to go to bed. Shockingly, Screaming Girl #2 gets abducted, forcing Screaming Girl #1 and DB to head back to the barracks.
The second time around we get more running around, more shaky cam, more pitch blackness and an explanation for the killings (which have now apparently doubled from one to two) but it’s such weak, idiotic, overdone tripe that I felt stupider for having heard it.
Then, just like that, it’s over.
Now, I’m usually a fan of terrible movies, but the ones that know they’re just plain awful and use that to their advantage. The unfortunate thing about The Cutting Room is that it thinks it’s a good movie. It does nothing new for the found footage style. It adds nothing to the slasher genre. It’s the same old song and dance that anyone with a little bit of cash and a camera could make. It has no heart, no soul. It’s an hour and fifteen minutes of zero logic, bad ideas and poor execution. Do yourself a favour and avoid it.
