Desecrated Ultimately Disappoints As A Horror
Desecrated is a ‘by-the-numbers’ slasher flick that begins very promising but quickly loses momentum. The movie throws in all the right ingredients needed for this type of horror but fails to create anything satisfying with them.
What’s It All About?
A group of teenagers go to stay in a house in the woods. The unsociable caretaker warns them of the dangers of straying off the path, but these teenagers came to party. When they discover some unsavory items stored in jars in a trailer that they brake into, they become suspicious. That doesn’t stop them going out for another trip into the woods the next day where things take a turn for the worse. The group begin to be quickly stalked by someone in the woods who doesn’t want them to get out alive. It doesn’t take long for the group of friends to begin to disappear.
My Opinion
This slasher movie was never going to bring anything new to a genre that has been around since the late 70’s, but these films have a tried and tested formula that can guarantee a certain level of success. Unfortunately for Desecrated, it decides not to follow this formula and suffers the consequences as we are given a movie that shows some early promise but ultimately falls flat.
The pre-title sequence was great, we had three guys in the woods who are attacked out of nowhere by a gas-mask wearing maniac, who knocks them out (or stuns them), ties them up, and once the recover, hunts them all down and kills them. Straight away this presented an intriguing and menacing looking antagonist who likes to hunt down his victims like a sport. This was simple, well done and had me looking forward for things to come.
However this is the last we see of the gas-mask wearing hunter. Instead we are given an ex-military man who seems to have had a breakdown from reality following the death of his wife and daughter, which is still quite an interesting character but the film just refuses to maintain any amount of focus on him. I would have loved to have really delved into this characters past and given him a more focus. I thought this character was a great idea and had potential to work very well. It would have been great to watch him spending more time stalking his victims, dressed in his gas-mask and military garb. This could help build the suspense. Look how well it worked in classics such as Halloween, this is a simple thing that works so well. I am sure some gas mask POV could have been very effective.
The film seems to really drag its feet for the first 40-45 minutes with not much happening. You were waiting for some development or something interesting to happen to the characters but it wasn’t there. They were simply going through the motions and I felt like I was waiting for it to pick up. Once things started moving, it did become a little more interesting. But this is a plot we have seen time and time again. We could see what was happening long before it took place on screen and within the first 20 minutes you know exactly how it would end.
Rob Garcia was in the directors chair and did a good job with the material he had to work with. I can’t complain with the presentation and execution of this movie, especially with this being an indie title, but unfortunately for Mr. Garcia the problem lay with the script. I felt like the story was the weak part. Cecil Chambers wrote the story and I think he tried to do to much. He has created a great villain, but couldn’t decide what he wanted to do with him.
Another disappointment was the group of teenagers. Haylie Duff who played Allie put in a good performance and her character was given some development to allow us to feel for her when something happened. The rest of the group were your typical one dimensional characters with little to no development which meant we did not care when they were killed.
Michael Ironside’s character of Aliie’s father was a real waste. He came into the movie for the final third, had about 10 minutes on camera where he suggested some sort of insurance sub-plot that was completely unnecessary. There was really no reason for him to be in the movie. It did not add anything to it, if anything, it actually took away some of the suspense with what was happening before his appearance. This could have been taken out all together and improved the movie. This is nothing to do with Ironside’s performance, he did a good job, it just didn’t need to be there. I felt this was put in as an afterthought when they needed something for Michael Ironside to do.
Finally I wanted to to talk about the death scenes. In slasher films such as this a certain amount of gore is expected during the death scenes. This is completely absent from this movie. I am not sure whether it was for budgetary reasons (if that was the case then it can be forgiven) but a great example is the land mine death, we don’t even see it. It is all a little anti-climatic, lets face it, your watching a slasher film you expect a certain level of gore, but this doesn’t offer any. I am not sure if they wanted to stay away from it but it feels like a bit of a let down. It was a real disappointment.
Notable Cast
Haylie Duff played Allie, by far the strongest member of the cast. She owns the role and gives a very confident performance. The character is strong willed and can hold her own in this horror genre as a ‘Scream-Queen’. I enjoyed her performance and feel she could do very well in the horror genre given a stronger script.
Gonzalo Mendez played Ben, the caretaker of the property. As I mentioned earlier I thought Ben had the potential to be a fantastic character. He had an amazing backstory that gave a fresh twist on slasher movies. I thought Gonzo struggled with this character, I don’t think he was to blame though, I feel like the confusing script left him unsure about how to play the character and I don’t blame him. There were certain points where he got it right but there were others that didn’t translate well on-screen.
The only other character worth mentioning is Paul James who plays Marcus, the nerdy character of the group. Yes, it is your typical one-dimensional slasher victim, but I thought he did a good job and played the part very well, it was a strong performance worthy of a mention.
Michael Ironside had no need to be in this, his character was pointless and simply turned up to imply a poorly thought out subplot that had no real meaning and should have been left out.
The Verdict
Desecrated had some genuinely good ideas and great promise but fails to deliver on them due to a poor script that gets mixed-up with what it wants to be. If this was your simple slasher movie and kept a straight forward formula with an interesting psychopath caretaker it would have been great. But take the gore away, remove any development of the characters, add in a few confusing sub-plots and your left with a disappointing horror. We can’t blame the cast or crew, I think this one fails with the script.
