Botched

Now available on DVD

Cast:



Stephen Dorff as Ritchie



Jamie Foreman as Peter



Geoff Bell as Boris



Jaime Murrray as Anna

Directed by Kit Ryan

Review:

In the age of unforgiving criticism from the internet horror community, it takes balls to try staging a horror comedy and call your attempt Botched. Even with all titular puns aside, mixing splatsticky horror and humor is a chancy venture, bound to draw comparisons to movies like Shawn of the Dead and Severance among the same online crowd that helped make those films modest successes. And while the fright+funny=cult hit formula that made Shaun so popular may seem too pliable (and deceptively simple) for many burgeoning horror filmmakers to resist (especially those on the medium-budget indie circuit), it’s hard enough to make a movie that’s exceptionally chilling or comedic. Filmmaker Kit Ryan struggles with both in Botched, but at least manages to keep his gloves up long enough to land a few laughs.

High-stakes heists are nothing new to Ritchie (Dorff), a professional thief bound by debt to an organized crime syndicate, but neither are on-the-job mishaps and failures. After a breezy opening swindle goes smashingly awry, Ritchie takes on a redemption job that sees him jetting off to Russia to swipe an ancient artifact from a high-rise tower. All goes well with the acquisition until one of Ritchie’s tactless teammates pulls a Reservoir Dogs mid-gig and opens fire in the building’s penthouse, blowing the group’s cover.

Botched kicks off like any good caper film, tight and engaging, but unlike similar horror/heist mash-ups (the raucous Tarantino/Rodriguez romp From Dusk Till Dawn comes to mind), we don’t wait long for gears to shift.

Ritchie and his crew quickly find more to worry about than their getaway with the stolen goods. Their elevator escape is halted on the building’s unlisted 13th floor, a maze of nondescript hallways and doors that lead nowhere. Ritchie takes the other elevator passengers hostage and begins the hunt for an exit, but vacating the premises proves difficult when hostages turn hostile and a barbaric madman attacks, wielding all manner of sharp implements. The ensuing bloodflow splashes vibrantly against the sterile office setting as limbs are severed, skin is peeled, and heads roll.

All of this is couched in morbid playfulness, every grim moment buffered by a whimsical interlude or a wacky music cue. Only Dorff (who made his prepubescent debut in The Gate before cutting his adult fangs opposite Wesley Snipes’ Blade and the regrettable, forgettable Alone in the Dark) and a posh corporate executive (Murray) play things straight. Trapped among an increasingly unstable cast of weirdos, they’re the foil for all of the fart jokes and faux heroics that permeate the script.

Dorff is convincing as a low-rent grifter, so it’s not hard for us to buy into his plight. His brow locked into a permanent grimace, he’s at times almost too serious, to the point that we’re not sure if he’s in on the joke or not. But his ardent quest for an escape is the only real thread we have to follow, and it helps balance out the otherwise reckless lunacy that’s both the film’s calling card and its key detriment.

With most of the characters just cartoons wrapped in flesh, the grave circumstances they encounter lack potency. The randomness with which heads are lopped off and characters eviscerated keeps the film bouncing along unpredictably for a while, but no matter how outrageous their final moments are – and they get fairly inane, including the appearance of a giant rubber rat so obviously fake it rivals the infamous library spider from Fulci’s Beyond — we eventually loose interest in the fate of this brazenly developed bunch.

Equally undermined is the film’s central threat, a shadowy, morally ambiguous cadre allegedly descended from Ivan the Terrible. Though Botched‘s corporate setting initially hints at an insidious force of grand scale, what we ultimately get is far less interesting – and, with its identify revealed much too early in the course of the film, far less frightening. There are some surprises wrapped up in the film’s script, but director Ryan telegraphs a few too many of them.

The net result of all of this is a movie that’s confused and uneven, as derivative in some spots as it is original in others. It has the flavor of a Shaun of the Dead, but neither the substance nor the flair. Still, it earns a few decent chuckles, and what it lacks in cultish appeal it attempts to remedy with sheer enthusiasm.

That may not earn it much critical cred, but, coupled with a few beers, might carry it in your living room.