Vile (2011) Reviews

• Not bad at all

  FredSlim2012-09-12

  As a rare reviewer on IMDb I only decided to comment on this after reading the rather negative posts from others. It ain't half bad - yes there are Saw/Hostel comparisons and it fits rather aptly into the "torture-porn" genre. It seems as though the production staff are fairly new to the game and I don't think they deserve the kind of criticism handed to them by the other (two, at the time of writing) reviews seen here. Without giving anything away, it's a solid, tense first hour with questionable (but believable, considering the circumstances, and assuming you have an open mind) character development that would have benefited from a less ambitious attempt at a dramatic conclusion and something that's worth a watch for fans of the genre.

• Tries too hard and delivers simply too little

  Robert_duder2012-09-08

  The incredibly successful Saw franchise gave birth to a new breed of torture type horror that many have tried to emulate but none ever come close to. The makers of the Saw knock offs miss the point that made Saw so successful and Vile is a perfect example of that. Vile is gory and torturous just for the shock value. It has a weak strand of a story, characters you just don't care about no matter how invested they try and make you, and no real villain per se. You know a "twist" is coming...its a given but you don't care by the end of it. The film will make you wince, there is no doubt about, some of the torture scenes are brutal although they try (again like Saw) to leave a lot of it up to your imagination. But there is also a fair share of true bloody gore. I really had to push myself to get through it just because the story was just really bad. I mean, the whole fill the meter with torture on each other is sort of an interesting concept but its so badly delivered. The most important part of the film is that you just don't care...how it begins, what goes on, and how it ends. April Matson plays the scream queen of the film. She does okay, much like the rest of the cast but they are given little to no personality. Her schtick that they make clear early on is that she's pregnant and that's her character in a nutshell. Eric Jay Beck is her boyfriend and pays an important part in the whole story. He does well too. He probably gives a slightly better performance but not by much. Akeem Smith is the token minority of the film. I liked his character, he was kind of feisty and actually more of a hero than the rest of them. Greg Cipes seems like the geeky second string character but plays a bigger part in the final outcome. I found his acting strained and almost annoying. There are a few other supporting characters that really do not much of anything than scream and run around frantically. The last main character would be Maya Hazen who plays the obnoxious and loud girl who wants to turn on everyone. She's okay but she truly does get obnoxious and has a ridiculous scene where she "accidentally" scratches wildly and ends up killing a girl ridiculously severing her neck artery. The actors are not the issue with this movie, they could have likely done a better job with a much better script. The story is simply poorly written. It's a hack job written by someone who wanted nothing more than to get their piece of the "Saw" induced pie. It comes as a zero surprise that the co-writers and producers are first time writers. Eric Jay Beck (who also stars in the film) and has a tiny bit of experience behind the camera and Rob Kowsaluk who has only this film to his credit. On top of that director Taylor Sheridan has done lots of TV performances but this is his only directing credit. Sometimes actors don't translate well behind the camera and this is the perfect example. Even fans of gore won't find much likable about this. 3/10

• Terrible movie...

  khaymanbb2013-03-27

  Okay, I tried to like this. I really did. When the synopsis is to inflict pain on someone to gather the "chemicals" in the brain, you would think that the people could think of creative ways to cause pain without breaking a leg, or disfiguring yourself via burning. I mean come on, really? Getting your fingernail ripped off hurts incredibly bad, and they do this to give them the extra "pain boost", so why not do that only? You have 20 of them for pete's sake, and they grow back! I felt sad watching this, as the bad person gathering these people must have chosen from a group of people that rode the short bus to school and only for getting off on watching them hurt each other. Yet at no time was any of that mentioned, just camera's to make sure they do what they are supposed to do. Dreadful acting, pathetic attempts at hysterics, just plain awful. If you see this on Netflix just ignore it. You'll wish you had...

• Simple story spiced up with some good torture scenes...

  paul_haakonsen2013-01-06

  Another cash-in in the wake of the success of the "Saw" movies. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. "Vile" turned out to be an adequate movie, actually, and it did have some pretty interesting scenes and moments that will have you curling your toes. So was the movie vile, as the title claims? Hardly, but it was a good movie in itself, and a good jab at this particular torture movie genre. But compared to the "Saw" movies, then it is fairly tame. The story in "Vile" is about a group of young people who get kidnapped and end up in a strange house where they are trapped along with another group of people. To get out of the house, they need to torture each other (or themselves) in order to collect some chemical that is released in the brain. They have to collect enough of this chemical to reach 100% before they are released. I will say that the movie concept was interesting and well enough executed. It really helped the movie that there was a good amount of rather gruesome scenes of mutilation and torture. So there was even something to please us gore-hounds. But again, next to the inventive ways of mutilation and mayhem seen in the "Saw" movies, then "Vile" was like water in comparison. As for the acting in the movie, well it was alright, but nothing groundbreaking or outstanding. Most of the characters tended to be generic and not really stand out from one another. The movie could have spent a bit more time on fleshing out the various characters, as to give the viewer some insight into whom was whom and what their personalities were. But then again, on the other hand, with this type of movie, the characters are merely just fodder for the grinder, so having generic characters is acceptable. If you enjoy bloody movies that are violent and doesn't need to have a deeper and more meaningful storyline, then "Vile" might be right up your alley. I found it enjoyable because it was so simple, yet brutal in itself. Without revealing anything of the ending of the movie, then I found it to be a rather lame and unrealistic ending to it. It was just downright insulting to end the movie that way for us who sat through it and hoped for something better at the end.

• Saw-lite

  kosmasp2012-01-24

  As much as I love Saw (and was curious about the evolving story in its sequels), I almost kind of despise it for what it kick-started. One of the (many) movies that seem to take the formula out of context is on display here. I watched it at Frightfest in 2011, which should be a good place to watch any horror movie ... if it is worth it. This one unfortunately isn't really worth the money. You get a bunch of people locked in a house. They wake up not remembering anything, but a video tells them, they have to hurt themselves to get free. As a reviewer (who was harsher then me) on Dreadcentral pointed out, there are options that don't even get discussed. But it's not the dialogues that try to be the strong point here. It's the torture scenes. While you could see some human behavior issues on display here, too much is left out to make it really count as psychological thriller. The actors seem to have too little to work with, but even that gets squashed away (no pun intended) ... I can't really recommend this at all