Botched (2007)

Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Release Date: May 13, 2008

Directed By: Kit Ryan

Cast: Stephen Dorff, Jaime Murray, Hugh O’Connor

Brutal As Hell Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 stars

Review By: Marc Patterson

Botched is part black comedy, part crime caper, and part psycho splatter-fest.  It follows a Stephen Dorff, a thief indebted to a Russian mob boss.  When his crew manages to royally screw up what should have been an easy snatch and go Dorff is sent to the motherland to make amends.  His job is simple.  Steal a sacred cross.  Should be a no brainer.  However, as his luck would go, he is teamed up with a couple of incompetent (and psycho) brothers.  The robbery predictably goes amuck when the older brother kills a woman and now the crew is rushing to skedaddle before security and the cops catch up to them.  In their attempt to escape they manage to take on a few hostages and land themselves on the 13^th floor of the building, which appears to be in great neglect, and under construction.  What’s worse, they discover they are now trapped on the 13^th floor with no way out.  Just as we get the feeling we’re in for a crazy Twilight Zone like twist we encounter a crazed barbaric lunatic (who apparently lives on the floor), and who is killing everyone off one by one.  I can’t even begin to explain the zany splat stick lunacy which follows. 

This film was all over the place.  It could have effectively been a tense nail-biting “13^th floor” nightmare to make Stephen King proud, but it decided to do something else.  It could have also been an incredible black comedy, but it only touched on this and unfortunately fell flat.  The humor itself comes off very dry and black, and when effective manages to only illicit a minimal snicker.  There was plenty of physical humor, but again, didn’t quite work. 

How the film transitions from a crime caper into a splatter-fest is something of a dubious affair executed in quite a clumsy fashion.  Actually “executed” is the perfect term, as it is the moment those giant sheers come out from a blackened elevator shaft and lop off the head to that poor no-named hostage that we know something quite horrific is afoot.  But again, instead of taking the more natural assumed supernatural route, we are in short form introduced to the most off the wall villain you would never expect.  Oh, the horror.

Despite its many flaws and flat jokes, I still strangely enough found myself enjoying the film.  It didn’t make sense.  It didn’t follow any real logic.  The premise was absurd. The acting sub-par (even by Dorff), but I still managed to have a halfway decent time.  Go figure.  There’s plenty of blood, and creative murders, though none quite great.  And the big payoff for me was a simple punch line to a joke that was subtly set up early on.  I won’t give anything away, but you’ll know what I’m talking about if you watch.

The DVD features no extras, no commentary tracks, etc.  Just a few staple studio trailers, so it’s not much of a release.  The best bet is to snatch this one on rental, put your brain on hold, and enjoy.