As a teenager, Angela Bettis was abducted by a sadistic nut job known as “The Bishop”, was strapped to a gurney and tortured while being forced to make the decision as to whether to continue suffering or request that her friend (bound to a gurney opposite) be killed. She got away, to live a life haunted by the fact that she let her friend die horribly. Overpowering “The Bishop” left her with physical and emotional scars. In the present day she returns to her home town to visit her Sheriff brother and teenage niece, just as a copycat killer begins abducting and killing local young folks. Bettis’ paranoid behavior leads to her becoming an unfeasible suspect in the eyes of the local law enforcement.
This heavily derivative splatter/slasher flick surprises by failing to exploit the 3-D gimmick for fun gore in the vein of FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3. If you’re expecting phony eyeballs and traditional yo-yos to be comin’ at ya from the screen, prepare to be disappointed by a surprising lack of goofy experimentation. Director Weintrob largely uses the new “real-D” technology for impressive depth of field, though there was a good deal of ghosting and artifacting in this particular projection that added to a sense of pointlessness about the whole endeavor. Only occasionally does the film have fun with the gimmick : the notable moment being one in which an uber-hot young girl dangles her bra out to the audience before the always-welcome boob shot.
At heart, SCAR 3-D is just a straight-faced old-school slasher movie dressed up with a dose of SAW-era sadism, with a key plot device that has already been recently used in the superior WAZ. Most of the actual killings are oddly off-screen but the flashbacks (scattered throughout) and the protracted denouement provide lots of fashionable torture and suffering. Tongues are cut out, feet tortured, faces sliced, belly button rings yanked out, acid poured on legs, chests staple gunned, a threatened teeth / chisel interface nicked from LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and even some grim scalpel-in-the-mouth shenanigans. These graphic scenes are well done and suitably bloody, though a tad par for the course right now.
Bettis, an instant genre icon thanks to MAY, is well cast, her genuinely haunted look suiting the part, though the script gives her very little to do, and all the other characters are functional at best. The film strives for suspense and delivers some mild creepiness, though it relies way too much on false scares : for the first time, a deer, a skunk and a pigeon all provide fake shocks (no cats in this cinematic zoo?!), while the climactic only-a-nightmare scare is cribbed directly from early DePalma.
The awkwardly structured movie also suffers from a mediocre killer (when he’s finally revealed) : a mundane high school misfit who talks way too much, this dude never generates a bonafide sense of menace or threat despite all the bad things we’ve seen him do. Still, his gory demise is among the highlights of a watchable movie that at least plays its old-school slasher ingredients straight and irony-free.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
