THE INFLICTED is a cheap and unremarkable serial killer thriller made on a tiny budget. A psycho killer befriends and then tortures his victims, some of whom survive and wind up in hospital. A team of detectives proceed to investigate and close in. Everything that plays out is painfully familiar, although the budget is a little bigger than many indies so this has a slicker, more professional look to it. It's chiefly of interest for casting a number of famous horror actors. Bill Moseley is here - as always - alongside the great Sid Haig, playing a good guy for once. HELLRAISER's Doug Bradley shows up as a cop and there's even a smaller role for that whipping boy of Italian exploitation cinema, Giovanni Lombardo Radice. The actors are the only real reason to tune in.
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Leofwine_draca27 February 2018
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Attempting to start a new family, a troubled medical student begins kidnapping and torturing several female victims until one gets pregnant with his child, but when she escapes and takes the potential family away from him he sets out to reclaim it at any cost possible forcing the police to stop everyone involved.
Overall, this was a highly problematic effort. One of the more enjoyable aspects here is the somewhat intriguing and rather dark storyline here exploring the need for capturing women to recreate a dysfunctional family life. Regardless of the execution that entails, the idea of the entire rampage being carried out in this manner with plenty of fine work here to explain the psychological mindset he has towards wanting it, based mainly on the relationship with his psychotic father that we see peppered throughout the film. These manage to make the torture scenes all the more intriguing based on the implication of him trying to fulfill his wish with the various women he comes across, focusing not only on the sleazy aspect of impregnating them but also featuring the brutality present in the kills when he finally snaps and begins killing provide some solid and sleazy moments as it goes through the rampage he commits to getting back at her as she tries to get away from him. These are fun and quite enjoyable, making for some enjoyable aspects to be had here. There are some issues with this one. Among it's biggest drawbacks is the complete lack of sympathy or interest generated by the main character, who is neither charming enough to go along with his psychosis nor chilling enough to be terrified of. There's very little about him her that makes us care about his deranged desire for family and to see it through, making the fact that the vast majority of the film is focused on him feeling quite bland and drawn out. Although everything makes sense, the fact that it's not brought out into any kind of manner for us to care about it makes what happens here wholly uninteresting, tying together with the focus the rest of the time on the police investigation. This is even blander with an ineffectual and near-useless series of scenes involving the detectives tracking people down or speaking on the phone about what to do next and there's very little excitement raised due to the ineffectual and unrealistic manner this comes across as. In fact, these manage to undo so much of what happens here that it's the most detrimental aspect of the film as a whole.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Graphic Language and several sex scenes. -
fred-28721 November 2015This has happened so seldom in his 55-year career that when he is presented in "The Inflicted" as a kindly avuncular psychiatrist, I was worried that the star/writer/director Matthan Harris was going to "pull a fast one" and have Haig's character turn out to be some Hannibal Lecter-type whack job, but I guess Mr. Harris figured one psycho character (plus a copycat) was enough. Haig is so warm and likable in this role that it once again seems a shame that career movie villains hardly ever get a chance at an Oscar nomination; Haig is that good, and I hope he plans to keep working until he's no longer with us. Also good is Haig's fellow Rob Zombie alumnus Bill Moseley in a more complicated role as an apparently well-meaning father who just can't regard himself as an evildoer. But other than these fine performances by these seasoned veteran performers, there's really not much to recommend "The Inflicted," a hodgepodge of so many other horror flicks I couldn't keep track of them all. As an actor I couldn't be sure if Mr. Harris is good at playing creepy or is just naturally creepy himself. He seems to be competing for the Dennis Hopper Most F-Words Award, forgetting that one needs Hopper's surreal charm to make that surrealistically charming. The plot is ridiculous, set in that alternate cinematic universe where criminals can go around doing anything they want as though they were invisible, and the police only ever appear in situations where they can be easily killed, without their colleagues knowing their location etc. One cop is played by an actor with a thick Italian accent with no explanation at all of how he wound up in Texas, which is the most amusing thing in the movie (probably unintentionally so). Near the end is a sequence in a mental hospital that reminded me of when I worked in one, with the drab institutional drug-enforced ennui hanging over everyone like a cloud. But even this is ruined when the killer appears standing atop the wall with a sniper rifle, again unnoticed by anyone. Please don't pay any money to rent this, but if it happens to appear on your cable on-demand service, I can recommend the parts with Haig and Moseley, feel free to fast forward past the rest of it.