Carver (2008)★☆☆☆☆

If you’ve been struggling to understand what I mean by “understated” when I talk about opening credits, this movie is a great example of opening credits that are not understated. That probably should have been a warning to me, but I kept watching anyway.

I won’t say that watching this movie made me want to carve out my own eyes, but I won’t say that it didn’t, either. You can probably skip this one. Even the brief boob shot isn’t enough to redeem it.

The music was awful, although “Turkey in the Straw” is definitely creepier than I remember (at least while playing off a record player in some creepy murderer’s basement). The acting was also pretty awful across the board. If I’m being honest, I feel like if you can’t make the first screams believable, you should probably stop making your horror film altogether.

There’s not really much redeeming about this one. It was weirdly paced, not very engaging, and not all that scary. It was pretty violent, but there are better films out there if that’s what you’re after. There were some neat scenery shots, but that’s not what I typically watch scary movies to see. And I’m pretty sure that during some of the forest scenes there were car headlights (like, from an obviously busy street) in the background.

This does have the distinction of being the lowest-rated movie I’ve watched so far, though! Oh, and on a side note…seriously, filmmakers: basing your film on a “true story” doesn’t earn you any points.