Scarred (2005)

"Local legend has it that a woman roams the woods in search of a pretty face to replace the vacant hole where her own was brutally torn off. Tonight, a family has set-up camp in these same woods, and they are about to discover the story of the faceless killer is no mere campfire tale..."

"Scarred" is just another formulaic low-budget slasher with a better backstory than it deserves and poorer execution than you could possibly imagine.

It has every cliché that you would expect from the family (with overly pretty daughters) making their way out deep into a forest where they plan on having a nice family bonding camping trip to everyone getting split up in stupid situations just so that they can be killed off. Hard to believe that this was made 5 years ago and not in the 1980s, isn't it?

I must admit that the first victim getting killed while she has gone off to have a crap amused me. It pretty much summed up the rest of the film and was almost as subtle a comment as the "Bikini Party Massacre" toilet scenes. Yes, this movie is crap too.

The dialogue in this movie is terrible, not that it matters because the sound is pretty dire too. The acting is substandard and uninvolving but maybe that is more to do with the general lacklustre atmosphere and extremely poor script. The girls are, once again, quite attractive but there's no real exploitation here so it is very annoying. That's right, no nudie bits!!! All the victims die without putting up much of a fight either so it's all very unrealistic. Most of the deaths occur off screen anyway, presumably because the budget wouldn't stretch any further, so this isn't much of a horror except in filmmaking terms.

At times it looks as if it is shot quite well but at others it looks as if someone just got a handycam for Christmas and is trying it out for the first time. "Inconsistent cinematography" would be a good expression to use here I think. Utter crap would be my own choice though. Reusing some of same footage over and over again (like they do in porn films!) was really lazy too.

It's not the worst film I've seen lately though it could do with re-editing into a comedy. There is certainly no spooky atmosphere or feeling of suspense here. The final minutes of screaming and growling was so bad and the "jumpy bit" scare scene was so predictable that if you watched them on their own you'd think you were watching a comedy anyway.

I'll give it 1 out of 10 but I sincerely warn you not to watch this even with a bottle of Buckfast down your neck first.