Inbred (2011)

Watching Alex Chandons new movie Inbred starts out as a very familiar experience. Let's see if you've heard any of this before: Two social workers are taking a group of teens with different problems out on a trip north. North here means a rundown little town full of people with strange teeth and staying at an old house that hasnt been lived in for decades. We all know where this will lead, and it does. It doesnt take long before the locals and the cityfolk clash, resulting in injury and death. But this is where Inbred really takes off. Yes, we've seen it all before but rarely as fun as this. Instead of just pounding us with the latest ways of displaying that old "favorite", torture porn, Chandon takes his clichéd plot and infuses it with a lovely black and absurd sense of humour that reminds me a lot of the Belgian movie Calvaire with a dash of Monty Python, especially in the scenes where the locals put on a show which I will not spoil, it needs to be seen. Let me just say that there is a lot of twisted gore and demented imagery here that will put a smile on your face. 

But what of the gore? Oh, there is plenty of that, all practical (well, 99.9% of it actually according to Chandon himself). Exploding heads, limbs sawn off with chainsaw, heads split open with an axe, you name it. This is a wet dream for a gorehound and the effects are really good, some of the best I have seen in a low budget movie ever.

If there is anything to complain about it is that the characters are somewhat weak, all of them products of the familiarity of the story but this is never really an issue since all of them are played by a really good group of actors, both the leads and the smaller roles. Everyone brings their own strengths to their roles, so even if the characters arent very interesting, they are still acted well enough for you to care about their eventual demise. The locals are especially fun to watch as they do their vile and bloody deeds when they are played by actors that obviously are enjoying themselves a lot.

Inbred falls firmly in the category of "Stupid and ignorant citydwellers fall foul of countryfolk" but instantly rises to the top levels of it because of the way it plays out. There is playing cat and mouse, there are traps and there are hicks laughing at dying Londoners, but thanks to the talent and energy both behind and in front of the camera we never really get the chance to realize that we've seen all of this in ten other movies, we just enjoy the ride. And you should too. Look for it in the future.

I saw this at the Weekend of horrors convention in Germany earlier today, together with Fred "Ninja dixon" Anderson and Jason "Cinezilla" Meredith and we were all blown away by the sheer fun of it, all of us starting to write a review in our heads. There was a short Q&A afterwards with Chandon and one of the producers afterwards where he told us that the version we saw was completed very recently and that they are looking for distribution. Let us all hope that this comes out soon, I want to own this now! In the meantime we will all bitch about who thought of Calvaire first. FYI, Jason stole it from me.