Filth To Ashes, Flesh To Dust (2011)

Studio: Midnight Releasing
Theatrical Release: September 30th, 2011
DVD Release: February 7th, 2012
Rating: Unrated!
Review by Craig Sorensen







OK, so there is a serial killer named “Purge” (wasn't he in X-Force?) and his schtick (because all good serial killers need an overly complicated modus operandi) is to kill the weak and “undesirable” in order to create a perfect society.  Don’t think too hard about that (the filmmakers didn’t).  Anyway, Eric (Derrick Bishop of iCarly) and Shelly (Diana Quizada of Big Ball’n) are driving around rock quarries or something and they run into a girl named Caitlin (Linda Bella of First Dog) who was one of “Purge’s” captives.  Then “Purge” shows up and kills Shelly.  Then we get a generic ‘one year later’ title card (I fucking love those) and we are introduced to our extremely boring teenage protagonists.  Also, Eric is a total fucking badass now and he has a 90’s Fishbone style hair cut.  Caitlin is also a badass as well.  The teenagers go out to see where “Purge” lived (everyone thinks he’s dead for some reason) and get trapped and Eric & Caitlin have to go rescue them.  And who fucking cares.

Ok, so it's another goddamn serial killer movie.  How many of these have there been?  Thousands by now for sure.  The genre has been driven into the ground.  Look, I know that it’s a cheap genre but at this point why bother if you aren’t going to try a radically different approach.  There’s a reason the genre crashed in the late 80’s.  If you’ve seen any, ANY slasher film in the last twenty years then there isn’t any reason to watch this.  You’ve seen it all before and done better.  I’m no fan of the Scream films but I would rather watch any of those than watch this again.  Hell, I’d rather watch I Know What You Did Last Summer again before this.  Do yourself a favor and track down a copy of the original My Bloody Valentine or Black Christmas (original again, in fact, always assume I’m talking about the original).  There’s more originality on display in Black Christmas than almost any slasher film after.  And it’s almost forty years old.  So just stop it.  Stop making these films already.

Oh, you’re still here?  Well, ok, let’s try to talk about the movie some more.  This is the laziest serial killer design I think I’ve ever seen.  For better or worse (probably worse) these types of films revolve around the uniqueness of their killers.  This is just a bald guy with a mustache who’s maybe in his early 30’s who wears a white undershirt and camouflage pants.  And he likes newspapers for some reason.  He wraps people up in newspapers.  And he’s got an old record player that I guess is supposed to make him creepy.  Anyway, he moves and acts just like Jason Voorhees.  So you know that he’s somehow going to pop up around every corner.  And he can pick people up and snap their necks like twigs because all serial killers have super human strength.  And don’t get me fucking started on his name.  “Purge”, it just screams 1990’s ‘cool’.  And what serial killer goes around naming themselves after 90’s comic book characters.  Real serial killers have names like John Wayne Gacy or Elmer Wayne Henley or Cleophus Prince Jr.  They don’t get cool nicknames like that.

All the other characters are fucking boring.  Everyone in this thing is just the worst kind of cliché.  The music is fucking awful as well.  Everything is so boring that I fell asleep during two sections of the film.  And these were supposed to be big exciting set pieces.  I just couldn’t help myself.  I was activly trying to stay awake for this review and I couldn’t do it.  The movie is that amazingly boring.

This shot on video affair looks fine in Midnight Releasing’s DVD.  I had no problems with audio or video with this.  It looks like a cheap horror film shot in HD.  So don’t let that aspect of the production stop you from watching this I guess.  The only special feature on this screener is a trailer which I can't bring myself to watch.