The casting is as interesting as the premise of this film. Starring such talents as Banks, Dahlia Salem, Sam Scarber and Allen Maldonado, it also dips its casting toe into classic horror nostalgia territory, with the casting of the lovely Suze Lanier-Bramlett (star of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes films) in a cameo appearance, as well as Gabrielle Stone (daughter of another genre favourite, Dee Wallace) who turned in an impressive performance overall.
Speaking of performances – a special mention to Banks who plays the role of Lane. He sets out to make the audience dislike this character, and he did indeed achieve this. Lane is one of those characters where you decide early on that you don’t like him much, but at certain points throughout, he will make you laugh and you will even pity him. Cut! is quite good at playing with your emotions like this.
Cut! could have so easily fallen into the abyss of ‘found-footage’ horror films, but thankfully it stood its ground and didn’t venture down that slippery path. Stylistically, the film has an air of unease about it – which I would imagine is the feel they were going for when shooting!
It delivers some good gore set-pieces as well as a few plot twists to keep the viewer on their toes. Sure, some of the twists sneak up on you better than others, but it is a film that keeps you wondering whether all is as it seems. Needless to say, all is not – and you may find yourself questioning the credibility of some of the revelations towards the film’s climax.
Having just completed a cinema screen run in Los Angeles, Psycho Rock Productions’ Cut! does already come with some impressive achievements to its name – including Best Film, Best Director, Best Leading Actor and the Award of Merit for Audio at the Independent Film and Television Festival 2014 – as well as being listed by the Official Movie Rankings as 4th overall best horror film of 2014.
CUT! is available on US DVD and VOD from February 24th.
Review: Cut!
By Andreas Charalambous - 19th February 2015
Best described as a twisted psychological thriller, Cut! revolves around events that seemingly actually happened in reality. Aspiring filmmaker Travis – played by director and co-writer, David Rowntree – teams up with psychopathic ex-convict Lane – played by co-writer David Banks – to make a scary film.
Due to their desire to capture authentic fear, they take the novel approach of scaring people for real while they film it all on camera. Lane’s fondness of snuff films comes to the fore when a scare goes too far and someone actually dies, leaving the pair to decide that maybe this is the way to go with this film project, and it morphs from fictional, to snuff movie.
