Thursday, September 30, 2010

Come Stay At The Severed Inn

It’s time to look at Legion Film’s local horror film The Severed Inn.
The Severed Inn was an originally part of another movie the company was making called Mind Morgue, in which it was a short story titled The Collector. The segment soon took on a life of its own and became a full length film.
Let’s get into the review. First, I want to talk about Shawn C. Phillips and M. Kelly a.k.a M.J. Kelly, they played the sons, Louie and Archie, of Inn owner Uncle Bob who was brought to life by Paul Braccioforte. I’ve been watching Phillips YouTube channel Coolduder for sometime and nice to see someone with a love of horror able to be in these types of movies. Phillips and Kelly play of each other well and they give the best performances of the film.
Now, let’s talk about the severed body parts. The film is actually about a man running an inn that makes home made sausage out of people and then serves it to his paying guests. He makes this sausage by cutting up people and then grinding parts in a meat grinder. When we see severed body part in the film they are done well.
Now let’s move over to the story. I basically explained the plot above and my honest opinion this is where the film really lacks. There were just too many things going on, we have Uncle Bob’s son picking up girls for their father, three people getting stranded in the middle of nowhere, a young couple vacationing in the inn with an older couple and Uncle Bob making breakfast and barbequing, there is a lot going on and it all leads to an anti-climatic end.
The story could have been much stronger if they just adjusted everything. First, I would have dropped that young couple, their performances weren’t great and their story was not even interesting to watch. Dropping that young couple would have made the three stranded characters storyline stronger, because they could have had more screen time. Yet, the storyline they should have really expanded on was Archie and Louie’s, that’s your movie right there. The film just needed really to cut down on characters so they could have developed Uncle Bob and his sons more.
The other thing that bothered me was the cell phone and no signal dialogue. I know that a lot of horror movies now days feel the need to establish that their characters are cut off from the world but can we find another way of doing this? I don’t need them to tell me time and time again that they have no bars. If you don’t have bars why don’t you head back the way you came until you get bars – problem solved.
Summing everything up, the Severed Inn shows promise where the effects are concerned but for the story and some of the acting is where the film gets dragged down. Yet, watching the movie you see promise in little pieces of it and with more experience these pieces can eventually grow and come together.
If you are interested in purchasing the film, you can do so on their website at http://severedinn.com/.

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