How would you do it? :Cornered! (2009)

Cornered! (2009)
Rating: ***
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, James Duval and Peter Story

In Los Angeles, a serial-killer is targeting convenience store employees and managing to evade capture by stealing the surveillance tapes. The cops, in turn, is struggling to identity the killer, thus offering the public a five hundred grand reward for any info about the maniac.

This news reaches a store that's closing down for the night and its owner, along with four employees gathered there for a fun night of poker, starts discussing what they would do should the crazed fella ever pops in. Some suggestions get thrown around, all the while cards are still being played, but as if talking about the killer invokes them like Madman Marz from Madman (1982) or Beetlejuice from, well, Beetlejuice (1988), the gang of five sound soon find themselves at the mercy of a masked killer who now have broken in to their store, hellbent on murdering everyone.

Cornered! is not really a title I was expecting to enjoy. The action takes a while to start as it goes about an hour of banter between characters, their interactions getting get a tad tedious to watch for how overly mundaneness they can get. Fortunately, there are some likable and funny moments to lighten up the run and the actors playing our casts aren't really bad with their roles. When the murders get going, so does the story and the murders we're treated with come with some inventive kills involving ketchup bottles, circular saws and even ice cream cones (!), all done by the hands of a menacing looking killer with a very simple, yet cool looking get up.

Admiringly, the production quality for Cornered! has a pleasant look to it, with nice camera work, some good creepy moments in its direction and some good laughs along the way in its writing. It's a respectable entre' that's good enough for a watch, so long as you're willing to wait, that is.

Bodycount:
1 male seen stabbed with can opener (opening surveillance video sequence)
1 male seen hacked with crowbar (opening surveillance video sequence)
1 male seen with his legs cut off (opening surveillance video sequence)
1 male seen with a cut neck (opening surveillance video sequence)

1 female seen being garroted with cord (opening surveillance video sequence)

1 male seen in half
1 female gets waffle cone to the eye
1 male repeatedly stabbed with broken bottle, choked on blood
1 male sawed in half with circular saw
1 female decapitated with cleaver
1 male found choked on donuts
Total: 11

And Cue BADASS pose!