Contains spoilers (but that doesn't really matter) After reading a couple of the more favourable reviews on IMDb I decided to rent this movie. What a mistake. What a baaaaad mistake.
It starts with Jason Connery's character travelling across America 'to find his smile.... after seeing his best friend killed in Iraq', or so the extremely bad voice over tells us. Then the action quickly jumps over to Hoboken Hollow via a new captive in the back of a van stating "I've heard of Hoboken, my Ma used to say 'Like a bat out of Hoboken" (pffff), and starts to unveil it's selection of completely unbelievable and unscary freaks.
We've got a foreman (Howell) who is trying his best to create a creepy ranch owner but only succeeds in creating a character only Jim Carrey would be proud of. A female 'brains of the operation' who's only slightly scary feature is her acne. A token 'freak' who's weapon of choice is an extremely low powered cattle prod that merely irritates people whenever he tickles them with it and a token 'mentally challenged but psychotic' son who carries out most of the butchery. Oh, and another character who I will mention in more detail later later.
And so it starts.
Now what these people tend to do is go on a drive every morning and pick up a few of the vast selection of conveniently placed hitchhikers that are on offer just waiting on the only road in the town, offer them a job on their ranch and proceed to torture and kill them if they don't work hard enough. Well I say torture but what I mean is poke them with the aforementioned 'Fisher Price' cattle prod.
There is another sub-plot also running alongside this main story, that of Maddsen's character trying to buy up some land a random shop is placed on (I assume this shop is on the ranch but this is never really explained), it's only obvious connection is that the shop sells the human jerky produced from the ranch. (This human jerky is only $15 a packet - hardly worth the effort really), and that the mother of the 'psycho son' runs.
So they've got all these folks stripping cedar (for sale at $50 for a lorry load), and becoming human jerky (for sale at $15 a pack) and everyone's happy until Maddsen makes Howell an offer of $25,000 to grass the others up for their inhumane acts (instead of grassing them up himself?).
The 'psycho son' overhears this and kills Howells, and we find out he's not as stupid or mentally challenged as he had everyone believe (WOW WHAT A (random and meaningless) TWIST!) and that 'acne girl' is not the brains of the operation it's 'psycho son's' Mum who is (ANOTHER (random and meaningless) SHOCKING TWIST).
And then Connery escapes from the ranch and finds his smile. WTF!!!!! Now, all the above could maybe be just about fine but one character really brings this story into the realms of absolute crapness. This character is a worker that has been on the farm for so long that he's become one of the family. The trouble is that this character is soooo inconsistent that it just becomes laughable, at times the story plays on his emotional battle between right and wrong but can't decide exactly where his real emotion lies, one minute he's laughing like a madman when they capture 'new employees', then gets back to the ranch and can't stomach what he's just done, then laughs like a madman when the family are torturing (tickling) one of the workers, then has a breakdown when he gets back to his room, all in the poorest, most unbelievable way imaginable, whilst his 100% normal everyday , non freak girlfriend weeps at their predicament (after getting raped that afternoon but doesn't tell him).
It was extremely hard to put together a cohesive 'outline' to this story due to it's absolute crapness, and in a way I want to say go and watch this film just to see what I'm getting at! But I wont.
The victims in this film would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they just traversed the waist high (that's right waist high) fence keeping them in walked off down the road in the middle of the night.
It starts with Jason Connery's character travelling across America 'to find his smile.... after seeing his best friend killed in Iraq', or so the extremely bad voice over tells us. Then the action quickly jumps over to Hoboken Hollow via a new captive in the back of a van stating "I've heard of Hoboken, my Ma used to say 'Like a bat out of Hoboken" (pffff), and starts to unveil it's selection of completely unbelievable and unscary freaks.
We've got a foreman (Howell) who is trying his best to create a creepy ranch owner but only succeeds in creating a character only Jim Carrey would be proud of. A female 'brains of the operation' who's only slightly scary feature is her acne. A token 'freak' who's weapon of choice is an extremely low powered cattle prod that merely irritates people whenever he tickles them with it and a token 'mentally challenged but psychotic' son who carries out most of the butchery. Oh, and another character who I will mention in more detail later later.
And so it starts.
Now what these people tend to do is go on a drive every morning and pick up a few of the vast selection of conveniently placed hitchhikers that are on offer just waiting on the only road in the town, offer them a job on their ranch and proceed to torture and kill them if they don't work hard enough. Well I say torture but what I mean is poke them with the aforementioned 'Fisher Price' cattle prod.
There is another sub-plot also running alongside this main story, that of Maddsen's character trying to buy up some land a random shop is placed on (I assume this shop is on the ranch but this is never really explained), it's only obvious connection is that the shop sells the human jerky produced from the ranch. (This human jerky is only $15 a packet - hardly worth the effort really), and that the mother of the 'psycho son' runs.
So they've got all these folks stripping cedar (for sale at $50 for a lorry load), and becoming human jerky (for sale at $15 a pack) and everyone's happy until Maddsen makes Howell an offer of $25,000 to grass the others up for their inhumane acts (instead of grassing them up himself?).
The 'psycho son' overhears this and kills Howells, and we find out he's not as stupid or mentally challenged as he had everyone believe (WOW WHAT A (random and meaningless) TWIST!) and that 'acne girl' is not the brains of the operation it's 'psycho son's' Mum who is (ANOTHER (random and meaningless) SHOCKING TWIST).
And then Connery escapes from the ranch and finds his smile. WTF!!!!! Now, all the above could maybe be just about fine but one character really brings this story into the realms of absolute crapness. This character is a worker that has been on the farm for so long that he's become one of the family. The trouble is that this character is soooo inconsistent that it just becomes laughable, at times the story plays on his emotional battle between right and wrong but can't decide exactly where his real emotion lies, one minute he's laughing like a madman when they capture 'new employees', then gets back to the ranch and can't stomach what he's just done, then laughs like a madman when the family are torturing (tickling) one of the workers, then has a breakdown when he gets back to his room, all in the poorest, most unbelievable way imaginable, whilst his 100% normal everyday , non freak girlfriend weeps at their predicament (after getting raped that afternoon but doesn't tell him).
It was extremely hard to put together a cohesive 'outline' to this story due to it's absolute crapness, and in a way I want to say go and watch this film just to see what I'm getting at! But I wont.
The victims in this film would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they just traversed the waist high (that's right waist high) fence keeping them in walked off down the road in the middle of the night.