Inbred (Germany/United Kingdom, 2011)
Rating: ***
Starring: Jo Hartley, James Doherty, Seamus O'Neill
So, what do you get if Herschell Gordon Lewis's Two Thousand Maniacs! takes place in jolly ole' modern Yorkshire instead of the Southern side of US of A? Why, this offensive and gory splatter flick that's definitely not for the sensitive and easily cringed, of course!
After a bloody movie-within-movie opening involving a work hand with a sharp axe, we follow four troubled youths and two social workers handling them as they visit the rural town of Mortlake for a weekend of team-building and community rehabilitation. And as most horror movies involving city peeps venturing into rural folk territory, the people of Mortlake isn't too keen of having a bunch of juvenile delinquents and two naive slickers skulking around their small town, though some of these townies are willing to put up with the bunch, particularly the village leader of sorts, Jim.
This looked like the case for a while until the kids got into an argument with three townies and resulted with one of the social workers severely injuring his leg and bleeding to death. Next thing everybody knew, a head gets decapitated, a few laughed about a misunderstanding and the town of Mortlake now has a "show" to watch that involves the torture and murder now five city victims-to-be.
Inbred undoubtedly fits the bill of an exploitation smoothie as the story mixes in many low brow horror movie traits from slasher film characterization, torture porn cabaret shows and the oh-so-offensive hicksploitation dark humor as mentally and ethically challenged deformed Southerners serve as our powertool-wielding idiotic villains. And with the protagonists hardly counting as anywhere sympathetic or deep (then again, what are we to expect from a cast full of delinquents and careless adults?), the movie more or less finds itself in a position of being simplistically stupid that offers very little in terms of build-up or message, but makes it up for it with a gorgeously blended practical and CG gore effects and all the morbidly blacker than black humor to wank a horse with.
I love how the mean spirit of the entire town gets played out in Inbred; you know dang well you should be disgusted and angry for how the townsfolk treat those they see didn't belong in their little world or even how they all think their backwards way of life is still acceptable in this day and age, but their cartoonish interpretation and whacky reactions to the most vile acts put upon both their victims and themselves are simply too outrageous to be taken seriously. This isn't to say that the movie is anything short of upsetting and distressing scenarios such as a desperate attempt to save a man being mocked at by our villains, or one of the victims' chances of survival being gambled on as if its nothing, but the splattery slapstick (or "splatstick") tone of the movie has a gruelingly stronger impact over the real horrors a more serious movie could have been focusing on and I believe that made Inbred an odder kind of trashy bodycount movie, which is obviously going to be in the middle ground of being either loved or hate.
For those expecting nothing but blood, gut and more blood n' guts then Inbred has it covered with a wide array of gory demises from chainsaw dismemberment, explosive shotgun killings and even a literal shitty death. Those wanting more than this, however, will be sorely disappointed as our meat bag victims are slowly reduced to screaming meat bag victims whose luck appears to be getting worse the more it appears they had a chance of surviving. It's not a horror film anyone could simply enjoy, but if you love shock-dwelling splatter movies of the bygone days of drive-ins and exploitation cinema, then Inbred certainly deserves a spot on your collection.
Bodycount:
1 maled axed on the mouth (film)
1 female axed on the head (film)
1 male seen dead
1 male had his head chopped off with a cleaver
1 male had his head stomped by a horse
1 male filled with manure until he explodes
1 male ran over by a van
1 male shot on the head with a shotgun
4 males ran down with a van
1 male has his head blown off with a shotgun
1 male shot in half with a shotgun
1 female had her legs sawed off with a chainsaw, head shot with a shotgun
1 male killed offcamera
1 female decimated by a landmine
Total: 17
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