B.T.K (Bind, Torture, Kill): DVD Review

I have not seen a good, newly released horror film in sometime, so when I was asked if I wanted to review B.T.K I jumped at the chance, although I made that choice simply by looking at the cover on Amazon, even though I should know that you shouldn’t judge a book (nor a film) by its cover.

The film is based upon the real life murderer Dennis L. Rader who was captured in 2005 and sentenced for the murders of 7 women, 1 man and 2 children. B T K stands for Bind, Torture, Kill, for the style he used to killhis victims. This film is a fictional piece and does not represent the crimes that he is actually convicted of.

Writer/Director Michael Feifer has directed 11 movies so far, none of them I have heard or and none of them scoring over 4.3 on IMDB so I prepared myself for a major disappointment as I put the disk in the player; but ratings have been wrong before, will they be wrong now?

Kane Hodder plays the part of Dennis Rader and he has the thickest neck in the entire world. He is a family man, a man with a decent job as a compliance officer although he does come across as over zealous and a complete jobs-worth in this and a man with a passion for binding, torturing and killing innocent people.

As I said earlier because of looking at the directors previous movie outings I was preparing to be disappointed with the film however, I have to say it was not as bad as I had first feared, although by no means perfect I felt that there were elements that came across very well; the gory bits were convincing, and there were scenes that had some genuine tension and I suppose that these surprised me as I was expecting the film to be terrible. The problem for me was the story or lack of one. The entire film for the most part seemed to be a series of set pieces for the crimes that are committed with little to no story in-between and that is where, for me, it falls down, although saying that it is suggested that the film could be a dream sequence which would explain the set piece type of story.

Acting wise Kane Hodder is actually pretty good, he is a big guy and can look menacing and yet harmless at the same time. He actually has a lot of experience within the movie world mainly as a stunt man working on films such as se7en and enemy of the state but also as an actor where he has played Jason Voorhees in various Friday the 13th movies; however he is let down by some of the supporting actors, the worst of which were the actresses who played his daughters they could not convince me that they had any range of emotion and this stood out like a sore thumb, Dru Ashcroft who played Sharon being the worst culprit, so much so that in a few emotions scenes towards the end of the film, when you look at her she is showing just zero emotion to the situation that is unfolding, and when she does do something like cuddle her mother she turns her face away from the camera and you know its because she would just not be convincing any other way.

There isn’t really much else to say about the film, it is not mind numbingly terrible and from what I’ve read about the other B.T.K movies that are out there then this one may well be the best of them yet, but at the same time there are enough poor points to keep the movie in the category of an average B-Movie which is mildly entertaining.

Picture:

The picture is surprisingly good for a low budget film. The image is sharp and clear. Even on some of the brighter scenes there was no real blooming of any kind, blacks were nice with little detail lost, The dream sequences where everything is tinged with yellow looks particularly clean too, overall I was very happy with the picture quality.

Sound:

The score consists of a creepy musical undertone that permeates throughout its running length, at the beginning it comes across as quite creepy but soon fades into the background and is quite unmemorable. I couldn’t really hear much going on in the surrounds on this Dolby Digital 5.1 track. The dialogue was sometime quite low, but generally was sufficient even though it only came from the front array, there are no real loud noises and certainly nothing to test any speakers really, overall the sound was sufficient.

Special Features:

Audio commentary with Director Michael Feifer and Actor Kane Hodder:
This was quite an interesting commentary, it is pretty lively from the directors side of things, Kane is more subdued but we are treated to a decent analysis of each scene and the ideas of the director.

Behind the Scenes:
The director talks us mainly through the crimes that take place within the film, certainly not something to watch before watching the main feature as it would like spoil those scenes in the film, we do find out that the entire shooting period of the film was 10 days, which concerned me somewhat as I did indeed watch this feature before watching the main feature. This feature is around 19 minutes long

Overall:

It is a mildly interesting film although does have problems with the story and some of the actors performances but from what I’ve heard this seems to be one of the better B.T.K movies out there. If B-Movies about serial killers is your thing then this maybe worth a rental but you would need to be a die-hard fan in order to purchase.

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