Review of B.T.K. (2008) by Tracy F — 01 Oct 2009

I went into this expecting very little and was actually pleasantly surprised. There's actually some pretty brutal scenes in this. There's a scene where Dennis is choking this escort who ran out on him earlier on in the film and the way Dennis is describing what she's going through as he has his hands around her throat and the way it was shot with the camera going out of focus, the sound fading, and the screen going black at times...it just stood out to me and is probably the most memorable scene in the film.

The film itself feels like a slightly above average direct to video film, which it pretty much is. The dialogue is medicore at best and the acting is pretty bad at times, especially when it comes to Rader's wife and two daughters. The deciding factor of the film that makes it worth watching is Kane Hodder. I can't really decide if he did a pretty exceptional job in the film as an actor or if the other actors in the film were just...not good. He actually showed emotion though and his dialogue wasn't flat, which is one of my biggest pet peeves in any film. He's pretty heartless throughout most of the film, but manages to get a heartfelt speech in at the end. I guess because he played Jason Voorhees for so long and had so many roles where he didn't have much dialogue that I wasn't expecting much from him in the form of acting. Something I'm happy to say I was wrong about.

The film's biggest flaw isn't the bad acting since that's pretty much expected in most horror films, but the ending. The ending was just...confusing. It's like they couldn't think of a way to end the film so they edited the last scene in a way that it kept repeating itself and then jumped back to some scenes early on in the film. Sound confusing? Try watching it. It just felt cheap more than anything else. Maybe I'm overlooking it and there's something that was said that ties it all together, but it felt like more of a cop out than anything else.

B.T.K. is an above average horror film that actually may be worth your time. There are some pretty decent kills in the film for the gorehounds and it might be a little more intense than you may be expecting. Kane Hodder is the film's biggest drawing point. Not only because he's the title character, but also because his acting is fairly strong in this. However, the film suffers from bad to subpar acting from the rest of the cast and the ending will more than likely leave you scratching your head. It's worth seeing, but you may want to rent it before doing something like blind buying it off the shelf.