A Slasher Film. Greek Style: Razor (2007)

Razor (Greece, 2007)

Rating: *

Starring:  Zoe Alexouli, Elisabeth Boutraki and Yolanda Dimitriou

The Greeks show how much they know about
slasher flicks, which is good but...

If you have been reading this blog for quite a while now, you would know that I'm a very open person when it comes to a country's first slasher. I can be sympathetic to their efforts and would try to give as fair of a review as possible. Movies like Russia's Trackman (2007), Japan's Evil Dead Trap (1988), and even the underrated Rabies (2010) of Israel have (or will have) favorable reviews from me for their effort to try and handle a genre so simple, it's often underestimated.

And then there are those titles that try too hard to impress.

Razor is Greece's so-called first English language slasher, made with zero-budget, a sluggish pacing and very tedious kills. The basic ingredients of a very terrible movie.

It starts off with a shot of a haggard-looking girl on bed, toying around with a razor blade that she then hides away when a man walks in. As the man begins to assault her, she uses said razor to cut off his dick. The girl's mum walks in, alerted by the screaming, and spots the man bleeding, quickly figuring that he was raping her daughter so she picked up a pair of scissors and stabs him in the chest. So far, not a single word was uttered on that scene alone, which would have been a sign of impending doom, but I venture on in hopes that I might be judging it too early.

Then next thing we're shown is a bunch of grown men and women trying to act in English, something about them visiting a friend over the seaside for some R&R. (Or at least, that's what they're trying to do) They have a Greek Salad dinner (which, I guess, they just call it "salad" there) before having a gratuitous sex montage, and the next thing you know we get a psycho with a hammer and razor viciously slicing them open one by one in tune of some heavy metal rock music. God, I hate it when they do murder in heavy metal...

The problem with Razor is that it tries to make it as gory and nasty as possible, presumably to compete with the gore-loving cinema within its release, but with very little budget to pass around, the so-called nastiness or gore is reduced to no more than some guy repeatedly slicing people with a shaving razor before killing them and doing it in routine. And as if the movie's pacing wasn't terrible enough, these kills take forever to commit that it gets tiring way too fast. It's torturous, yes, but we're looking for a slasher flick here, not Torture Porn (there IS a difference) so I don't find people being sliced to death with a razor while rock music is playing as scary, fun and/or impressive.

Now, I'm not bashing this effort. I'm just saying it could've use a load more work and brains as it's too cheesy to be taken seriously and, at the same time, any attempts to be serious are so bad that you couldn't help wonder if we're supposed to laugh at a scene or wince in terror. And then there's the part where the director thought it'll be a great idea to let the cast speak in English so the rest of the world will understand the film, which is sweet on his part but it made the movie very distracting with the accent and I really had a hard time trying to decipher what they just said more than once. (Y'know, possible clues to what's going on with the movie and junk?)

Maybe it's just my taste that made me rate this one so low (seeing I'm a guy who had seen even the most obscure slasher/thriller flicks (and lived)) and it would probably find a fan or two who can appreciate this Greek salad of a slasher movie (Just hope the next guy who would watch this and give it a high rating isn't speaking for a friend involved in this film), but yeah, execution-wise, Razor is a terrible movie and a possible waste of film space.

Watch at your own risk.

Bodycount:
1 male stabbed with scissors
1 female dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male had his throat cut with razor
1 female axed on the chest
1 female had her head bludgeoned with her own dismembered leg
1 male killed
1 male tortured with razor, dies of heart attack
1 female dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male dismembered with axe
1 female hacked to death with axe
Total: 11