The Cutting Room starts off with a very intense credit sequence: black screen with freaky old-timey music, intercut with torture sounds and screaming, and then the visual of a young woman being chained to a table. But after that, the film just sort of twiddles its thumbs for an hour, leading up to a not very rewarding climax. Oh, and it's found footage! So it's another film to add to the ever expanding pile of crappy found footage films, I guess.
Anyways it's about a group of three college students (or whatever they call college in England). Hooligan guy Raz, and Charlie and Jess - two young women that don't really have much by way of defining characteristics. The three of them are in a group in a media studies class, and their assignment is to make a behind the scenes featurette for a documentary. And I guess a documentary in the process. It's a weird assignment, but at least it gives them an excuse to continuously film, even during the most boring of times. Anyways, they decide to make their film about a young woman in town who has recently gone missing. Some say she just ran away, while some say she was taken... since we've seen the torture chamber already, we have a good idea as to where she ended up.
The three friends rudely go to the missing girl's house and start asking questions, and her parents let these (total strangers) peep around in her room. And (in case you were wondering)... yes, these plucky youngsters manage to figure out more than the cops could. But what they find could put their lives in danger. "Luckily" for us they bring along their camera so we can see the whole thing unfold.
The biggest issue with The Cutting Room? Not much happens, and it feels like a much longer film than the 70-some minute run time would lead you to believe. I mean, the opening credits basically tell you where this thing is going to end up, but it takes forever to get there. And the film never really does anything interesting in the meantime. It's just a matter of waiting as the trio *kind of* investigates the crime... But it's not even an engaging mystery. (I mean, I guess I didn't "guess" the killer, but I just I assumed it would be some random guy. I mean there's only like two other people in the film. But, SPOILER: it's both of them. So that's dumb.)
Horror-wise? Once things start to happen... eh. "Running around and screaming in an underground tunnel" pretty much sums it up. It's nothing you haven't seen before in the found footage genre. The opening credits would lead you to believe that The Cutting Room has some torture porn-ish influences, but they hardly ever play out on camera. Plus, you get an odd zombie-ish moment that the film never bothers to explain. (If you're a grim n' gritty found footager, I think you have to at least attempt to explain *why* there's some legit gut-munching going on.) And there's a little slasher stuff in there too. And almost none of it works. The successful parts of the film essentially boil down to "hey, isn't this mask scary?"
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| Isn't this mask scary? Why yes, it is. |
The Cutting Room at least has some characters that are not too annoying, and seem reasonably realistic (other than not calling the cops when they totally should). But like some real people, they are not too interesting. Even when they're being chased by a dude in a scary mask.
So that's what I've got. Pretty bad and uninspired stuff.
I would not recommend this film.
Oh, one other notable thing, The Cutting Room gives Archivo 253 a run for it's money in the "how many times can you yell a character's name in a short period of time" department. So that's something. Guess who is missing? This is over a few short minutes... and I missed a few. They're coming fast and furious, and the folks at Amazon didn't bother to caption some of them.
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