Scars (UK DVD)
Starring Danielle Cole, Neale Kimmel, Matt Wells, Eric Regimbald
Directed by Sean K. Robb
Distributed by Left Films
Girl power goes to the extreme in writer/director Sean K. Robb’s psycho-horror Scars, wherein a chance meeting between ladies Scar (Cole) and Scarlett (Kimmel) quickly develops into a violence-themed co-dependency as the pair take revenge on the various men in their lives.
A product of a broken home and subsequent abusive relationships, Scar is the first to show her refusal to accept the life she’s been given when she viciously stabs her slob of a boyfriend to death before burying him under a bridge. On the other end of the spectrum, Scarlett wings her way through a somewhat well-to-do existence by trapping married men in her honey pot before financially blackmailing them.
When one of Scarlett’s marks reacts violently to her threats – strangling her in an alleyway – an adrenaline-fuelled Scar leaps from the shadows and treats the aggressive gent to a swift demise via the business end of a kitchen knife that Michael Myers himself would be proud of. Feeling indebted to the destitute Scar, Scarlett allows her to come back to her place for a shower and the two quickly form a bond.
After heading out on the town and finding themselves back at the home of a male security guard, Scar’s disrespectful behaviour and destruction of property sees the man physically attack her – only to find himself summarily executed by our femme fatales.
And so it goes, as Scar and Scarlett wage war on men – Scarlett taking the fight to previous blackmail victims while Scar lashes out relatively indiscriminately… and anyone familiar with this kind of psychotic drama knows exactly where the story’s going when Scarlett enters a romance with detective Mike (Wells), who warns her to keep away from her dangerously unhinged friend.
Scars isn’t a particularly bad flick by any stretch – the two leads are convincing, if not entirely sympathetic, in their roles and despite a couple of slow stretches and a home invasion sequence that doesn’t quite gel, director Robb has a decent grip on his pacing. The violence is harsh – sporting some seriously wince-inducing brutality including a vicious crotch-stabbing that’ll have men everywhere crossing their legs. Effects are low-key but satisfying – except, perhaps, for the gigantic, fake looking knives the girls like to employ in their butchery.
What lets the film down is its familiarity and lack of truly deeper substance. Par for the course in this type of thing, these are two women who are mad as hell at the world and happy to show it – except one maybe isn’t quite as mad as the other and soon realises she’s unwilling to go to the lengths expected of her. Chuck in a wafer-thin love interest destined only to set proceedings on a predictable path of conflict and you have a story that struggles to dive below the surface in any meaningful form.
And that’s a shame, as the early stages do reveal a layer of promise for a budding indie horror Thelma & Louise – but the character hooks and rewarding dramatic arcs just aren’t there. So while Scars may have more than enough stabbing to go around, it lacks that crucial wallop.
Left Films bring Scars to UK DVD sporting the film’s trailer alongside a collection of trailers for their other releases. That’s it on the extras front.
Special Features:
- Trailers
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Film
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Special Features
Categorized:Reviews
