Do you side-eye when a horror film is touted as old school? As if its style is paramount to the quality itself? As if the promise of practical can mask any lack of quality? Or does it mean it has little regard for women in the same way vintage sleaze does, our enjoyment of which often hinges on its existence as exploitation, or cultural artifact, or just of a different era. Basically, I dont know if old school means cool SFX or treating women poorly.
And its entirely possible Muck isnt interested in the latter. I havent seen the film. It is interested in marketing itself as both rife with practical FX, and unabashedly salacious and brutal however, qualities whichespecially in horrorthere isnt anything wrong with (oh how we love De Palma, after all). But its trailer essentially only highlights women disrobed and in some state of disrepair. Its latest clip meanwhile, boasts a finale in which a heavily injured women is tossed through a window, entirely naked.
Its rough stuff, with her boyfriend forced to bear witness, and in this small excerpt, its context-less. Hopefully the full film will reveal something old school in its FX but at least aware of, if not with something to say about, the shallow degradation of women for cheap thrill. The press release, which excitedly points out you see breasts in the film (never mind if they and the rest of the person’s body is bloodied and battered), makes me fear not.
Starring Kane Hodder, Muck opens with a group of friends “narrowly escaping an ancient burial ground, long forgotten and buried underneath the marshes of Cape Cod. They emerge from the thick, marshy darkness, tattered and bloody, lucky to be alive. They have already lost two of their friends in the marsh, presumably dead. They stumble upon an empty Cape Cod vacation house alongside the foggy marsh and break in to take shelter. Whatever was in the marsh is still after them and soon after one of them goes for help, the rest of the group learns that the evil in the marsh is not the only thing that wants them dead. Something worse, something more savage, was lying in wait just outside the marsh, in the house. What happens next is unspeakable horror that cannot be unseen. These unlucky travelers spend their St. Patrick’s Day trapped between two evils forcing them to fight, die, or go back the way they came.”
Muck is on DVD & Blu March 17th and will receive a limited theatrical release just prior on March 13th. Find the NSFW clip and the film’s trailer, below.
