My Bloody Reunions: To Become One (2002)

To Become One (Australia, 2002)

Rating: **

Starring: David Vallon, Emma Grasso, Jamie Giddens

Hey, dear readers! Ever wondered what would The Human Centipede (2009) would be like if it was a slasher? No? Well, good for you! You're completely sane and I don't have to worry about you! But, yeah, that's what this low-budget early-2000s Ozploitation reminds me of. Minus the poop thing.

A year after seeing her dear mum get sliced in half by a killer donning a gas mask, Melinda was just celebrating her birthday with friends one night when the same masked maniac shows up to ruin the evening, slaughtering a couple of guests. More of Melinda's buds are then bumped off no soon after, forcing the rest of the gang to try saving themselves from being murdered by driving into the countryside. (Which meant they'll be far from civilization and any potential help, surely making themselves convenient for the killer to pick off one by one. And some of you wonder why I often root for the killers in these films...)

One car bomb decimated, two girls burnt to a crisp and a Carbine gun opened fire later, Melinda is chased into the woods where the killer finally corners her and this is when the movie begins to shift the curve because next thing you know, she's bound to a hospital bed and stuck inside an insane asylum where a doctor high on religious fervor plans to reunite her with a long lost family member ala surgery. Melinda must now find a way to escape the demented doctor and his crazed cohorts before she suffers a fate worse than death, all in the meantime taking a gander or two to what kind of delusions the sick surgeon is feeding himself, his staff and his congregation of patients.

From teen slasher to medical-cum-cult horror, To Become One (2002) has the ambition to better itself and be more than just another slasher flick which is admirable, yes, even more so when the production only had to work a couple of grand. However, the clumsy execution of this gesture shows that the film still bit more than it could chew and it's distracting to say the least, more often within the movie's clunky ventures to stylize itself with warping colors and overly active camerawork, as well as dripping the horror drama elements with too many talky scenes that are just made worse by wearisome writing. There are no likeable characters to root for and the killer could have been this movie's strong point as they do rock a good gas mask and black trench coat combo, and the murders they commit have a decent splash of blood and gore to them, but all that's tossed away the moment they're unmasked midway into the movie and, before you know it, they're just annoying to watch.  

Finishing on an inevitably frantic note, To Become One (2002) is too much of an overworked yet underwhelming chore to watch as a whole; while the slasher half have a lot of dumb moments, it's somewhat entertaining with its badness, which is a lot more than I can say about the pretentious wannabe psycho-drama we're treated with in the other half. If you think about it, it doesn't really add up now, does it? Why does the killer even have to stalk and massacre Melinda's friends if the main goal here was to get her to the hospital and settle her for surgery? Why waste all that precious time and energy? I don't know. All I can tell is that there is a good idea to be found here, it's just messily handled in this blunder of a film. 

Bodycount:

1 female sliced in half with a sword

1 female ran through with a digging bar

1 female had her head skewered with a digging bar

1 female had her neck crushed and slashed open with metal claws

1 male garroted with a thin wire

2 females decimated with a bomb

1 elderly male passes away

1 male stabbed in the back with a knife

Total: 9