Film Review: Tortured (aka Sex Slave) (2010)

SYNOPSIS:

From the notorious director of modern day exploitation films, Jason Impey, comes this brutal and disurbing tale. Quaid & Kurk are two notorious convicts who have escaped prison and are trying to flee the country. To ensure their safety they abduct an innocent, attractive woman to use as a hostage to protect themselves from the police. But Quaid has hidden motives for the abduction and Kurk doesn’t like what he sees, leading to a deadly game of cat and mouse full of jealousy, deception, lust and murder. Get ready for one of the most graphic films to hit the screen! 

REVIEW:

There are so many films on the market with the title “tortured”, “torture”, and “the tortured”, that I usally have to do a double-take just to determine if I had seen it before.  With the movie sporting the title “Tortured”, I can at least say that they have a gratutious scene that caters to that.

This film had me in confused right from the start. Though, we’ll get into that in a bit. Two gangsters are in the process of burying a body. They exchange, bicker and go on and on about what they want to do. I was wondering after about 40 minutes of this, if there was really was going to be any torture or if we just signed on to become flies on the wall of a drive-about-and-chat session.

Utlimately it is decided that a nice looking hostage will do the trick if they are going to escape the country as recent convicts. The film continues on this path with an occasional nude scene to move us from one act to the other. The highlight seems to be an extended shower sequence that feels more planted than seductive.

This setup leads to more dramatic things later. But have no fear, as there is a nice inclusion of a brutal rape scene for the hardcore viewers. I faield to get the horror vibe even with the zombie intro. Perhaps it was a confused script that blew it for me.

What throws this film off is the misplaced beginning that has the dead coming alive for a brief zombie intestinal moment. The scene doesn’t fit ANYWHERE in the film and feels more like it was added ON after the production to help it sell better in the horror market. Main characters Kurk (Rami Hilmi) and Quaid (Nicholas Stoppani) fail to provide an engaging performance, that bored me more than entertain.

Director Jason Impey has a previous history of directing horror shorts. This feature would have been better left on the shelf where it belongs rather than released as a first product. One of the things we come across as reviewers is 1 too many “not ready for prime time” productions. This is unfortunate as it hurts the film industry and the genre.

“Tortured” originated under the name “Psychopaths”. It also looks like it was called “Sex Slave” at one point.

Regardlessof what it ends up being called, you can’t really force horror on a product that was intended for a different genre. The rape scene “might” fulfill some hard core needs, but not enough to write home about. I do have to give the actress Amber Lee credit for enduring her on screen humiliation. “Tortured” is a low budget independent piece coming in at an estimated $5600. As you can guess, that’s not alot of money to make a film.

The only real torture here was sitting thru this mess. enuff said