A Horrible Way to Die (2010)

Truly Dreadful Film

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There is a lot to admire here, mainly a great lead performance by Amy Seimetz as the alcoholic ex-girlfriend of a serial killer trying to re-establish a normal life. Also it's tough to pull off a naturalistic arthouse horror flick, and this attempt does better than most. For most of its running time this plays more as a drama (that happens to involve a serial killer) than as horror. But two elements nearly wreck the film. One, mentioned by many other reviews here, is the constant close-ups with a jerky handheld camera. A little of this would be fine but it never lets up, this movie is 87 minutes of random close-ups with a camera that won't hold still. It's too much and becomes a constant distraction. Second, there is a very ill-judged twist five minutes before the end that effectively undoes much of the naturalistic appeal the movie had until that point. I won't reveal it here, but will just say it was wholly unconvincing to me. Even with these serious flaws, I found this to be worth watching for Seimetz's performance and for the unhurried, reflective storytelling. What's good here will stay with me, which makes the misjudgments that much more frustrating.

Unfortunately, I couldn't watch this film due to the shaky camera..I turned it off after 10 minutes. I like this genre, but that horrible SHAKE makes me too dizzy and bordering on nausea. I've missed a lot of good (looking) movies because of the awful camera work..

Good action story. The filming is rather amateurish giving the viewer a headache watching the movie with so much camera shakes and sways which was done on purpose for unnecessary effects. This is aggravated by scenes switching back & forth. Luckily we have the main character's beard to help out. (The main actor with full beard means the scene is from the past, If it shows the man just with mustache then it is at the present!). Otherwise this is not a bad movie. The acting is quite good and full of fast moving action. The movie is all about killing and showed how it can be done horribly. It should be classified as adults only. It can also be classified as a horror movie.

This film deserves high marks for the all-important mood making. The integration of music and sound, infernal or merely funereal, and sometimes reaching up into the natural (police sirens) makes the presence of evil constantly there even when just driving along an empty road.The dementia in this film is not merely the efforts of a single mad man but the hellish world where abductions, torture, rape and murder are accepted. And it does this realistically.In this type of film there are always the moments of normalcy contrasted with the evil. But here, the only normalcy is in AA meetings which are themself like the reflective upward facing surface of Hell. This fills the whole film with a feeling of pity and despair.But the film has a fatal flaw. The plot is unfollowable. Also, owing to the dark nature of the exposure, it was not always easy to identify characters. This is further exasperated by the awkward use of flash back. So that while I saw the beautiful naked woman dead in the tub--and it was a disturbing image--I could not say whether it was the same woman in later scenes clothed and still alive--or whether it was a serial killing. I certainly had no bearings at all. The film shows promise but results are defective.