Scar 3D (2007)

9th Mar 09





Plot
A plot? That’s something that bypassed the makers of Scar 3D. What passes for a plot here, mainly in flashback, is that Joan Burrows (Angela Bettis) has decided, some sixteen years after escaping the clutches of a rather bonkers undertaker called Ernie Bishop (Ben Cotton), to return to her hometown of Ovid, Colorado for her niece's high school graduation.

Ernie Bishop had this habit of tying up two people that had close links to each other and torturing both in turn till they gave in and cried out for the other to be killed to stop their own torment. Joan was lucky enough to get away but wouldn’t you just know it, now she's back on home turf a series of murders starts up that gets her thinking that perhaps she didn’t kill Bishop after all.

Review
When I saw the Frightfest line-up for August 2008, the idea of this movie tickled me rotten. It got me thinking of dodgy old 3D stuff like Warhol's Flesh for Frankenstein, I don’t know why but it did. Come the first night of the festival and there I was squabbling with the hotel I had made my booking at rather than sat in a darkened auditorium watching 3D thrills spill out of the screen.

Jump forward to the movie’s DVD release and I'm practically gagging to cancel all plans and stick the damn thing on. However the thing is the preview copy only came with one pair of goggles which meant when I did get round to watching it, if I wanted to watch it in anything other than 2D, then I was gonna have to do so alone.

Horror movies always work better for me when there's someone else about jumping or gasping at the sights on screen. In the case of SCAR 3D there would have been no chance of that happening anyway but that’s beside the point. This movie suffers big time from being a terminal bore from start to finish complete with a viciousness that isn’t justified by its paper thin plot.

First off, the plot is obvious, without tension and rips off a much better movie like WAZ, in respect of how the killer matches people against each other for the kill. Writer Zack Ford appears to have little or no imagination and instead goes through the motions, coming up with tired routines that make you ache with disinterest and roll your eyes in disgust. And who the fuck calls their killer Ernie? ERNIE? Didn’t he drive the fastest milk cart in the West?

Picture this. The lead finds a freshly bloodied corpse, she is already under suspicion by the local police so what does she do? That’s right! She picks the knife up and then runs around waving it around like a loon. And you know what? You can see it a mile off that she’s going to that do because it’s been done to death a million times before. Even the final reveal as to who the killer is fails to raise any interest. In fact all I could muster was a groan and his reason for killing was such an old cliché.

Its a shame as the lead actress Angela Bettis is a pleasing screen presence and her turn as Carrie in the 2002 remake, which was never going to be in the same league as Sissy Spacek's sensational turn, was better than you would have hoped for. Here though she is reduced to doing very little except panic and scream and it’s a complete waste of her talent.

The direction from Jed Weintrob fails to inject any spunk into proceedings. Even with the 3D gimmick at his disposal, nothing here really comes to life or jumps out at you. It is kind of ironic that the movie features scenes of torture when it is just that to watch this terminally dull flick.

The publicity blurb would have you believe that this is the 'most gruesome and stomach-churning horror film ever to be released in 3D'. I haven’t seen anything this mind numbing and needless since 1983’s Jaws 3D. The gore is limited and the flashback structure confusing.

At pre-screenings of SCAR 3D someone passed out and another ran out. It could be argued that this is because of the shockingly low standard of movie making rather than anything shocking plot-wise that happens on screen.

With major studios pushing their big budget productions, such as the Harry Potter movies or the latest animation smash, with 3D moments, albeit in IMAX format, the 3D formula looks to be here to stay.

If the case were to rest for the future of 3D on the evidence of this nasty little movie then it should be aborted. Night of the Living Dead 3D was a lot more fun than this. Hell even Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D was, and given that movie was unquestionably awful you know that the benchmark here has not just dropped but sunk without a trace.

Posted by
S Cockwell



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