I’m really not quite sure where I stand on the movie Carver, its either pretty good or diabolically awful, I’m caught some way in the midsection on this one.
Made on a ridiculously tight budget Carver follows the adventures of five young sexy people as they stop off in a rural location while enjoying some “away” time from the rest of the world. After speaking to a creepy bartender in a roadside bar, they volunteer to go to his isolated shack to carry out an errand. Rather than just doing as they are asked however they decide to break some locks and examine his collection of home 8mm footage. Believing that they are watching some low budget horror movie (rather like the one they are appearing in), they are appalled at the violent deaths that feature in the film. But as they get away from the shack it becomes apparent all too much for one of the travellers that they have entered the realms of a real life movie and that if they do not escape soon, they will be the movies next victims.
Carver is absolutely disgusting to watch, from vile looking toilets filled with faeces, maggots and worms, to an exploding testicle bought on by “The Carver’s” unique use of a monkey wrench. It’s all a little too intimate for most movie fans liking, which is both its strength and its downfall. While some like to see that little bit more, I’m not too sure that we wanted to see quite that much.
What I did like about the movie in general was the storyline; it was pretty good; the idea of these kids violating someone’s personal space provides the ultimate an eye for an eye question. I mean personally, if you’re asked to do someone a favour because they need help or to trust someone, if you violate that space you get everything you deserve. While there is the other train of thought that tells you when a building or location has bad vibes that you just might want to look a little deeper into the heart of the issue. Good and bad aside amid the strength of the story there is also great weakness, and most specifically the movies director/writer Franklin Guerrero Jr. Thinks that the story is cleverer than it actually is, the ending of the movie specifically that in his insular world he believes to be a great revelation, the most unfamiliar horror movie viewers will have spotted from the movies offset, it’s first ten minutes in fact. I do not understand why the director believed that nobody would suspect what is fundamentally obvious.
Of the cast there is nobody here worth really discussing; to be honest with you they are all fairly average actors working on a low budget movie, the most likable of which Neil Kubath who plays Bryan does overshadow the others quite considerably. The leading man and lady really don’t have it in them to shine, and given the weaker elements of the story are in a place that for them there is nowhere to go.
The movie despite it’s good elements, especially a rather tense series of assaults in the basement of the shack, goes in some really stupid ground. There is a bizarre wedding dress incident that is not explained though clearly was designed to point somewhere, and a really ridiculous and drastically unneeded suicide which is in fact one of the most nonsensical things I have seen in a movie for a considerable time.
When it comes to Carver there are so many hits and misses that it is incredibly hard to access the movie fairly, the best suggestion I have is that if you’re a fan of horror, give it a swing, you might love it, you might hate it; this is very much a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder, but personally I’m closing one eye on this one.
