Review of Laid to Rest (2009) by David C — 24 Apr 2009

It was good for me to watch this movie because it convinced me once and for all that I'm not a gore-enthusiast. Let me explain.

There are certain movies that have only one thing going for them. For example, suppose a film is about sex. Now, lots of films are about sex. But say that the movie has little to no plot, bad actors, a low budget, almost no characterization... but lots and lots of sex. This is a porno. And while one may argue the artistic and moral merit of pornography the fact is that there is a market for it: for people who like films about other people having sex. There are films about action. Just action. No plot coherency, no real characters, just fight scene after chase scene after explosion after gunfight ad infinitum. Action movies. For people who like action. And I like action movies just fine, sometimes especially the ones that aren't anything but.

Laid to Rest is a slasher in that kind of pure sense because everything else in the film (plot, characters, acting, etc.) get thrown by the wayside to make room for the gore. This may be par for the course as far as slashers are concerned I suppose, but the effort seems overly obvious here. With the big-titted female lead suffering from an overly-convenient amnesia for the entire movie, the writers have carte blanche to set the story whenever, wherever, and with whomever they want and not have to explain anything. Why is she in this particular small town? Why does she meet these particular people? Why is the killer after her? What does he want? Who was the girl before this killer wanted her? It all doesn't matter because, look at that, she can't remember. The location and the other players may as well be randomized. The movie sees fit to even assign her a generic damsel-in-distress name "Princess" pulled from a random childhood memory she conjures up that never proves relevant afterward. Even her klutziness and profound idiocy (also staples of the genre) are explained away with her amnesia being caused by head trauma that's left her a little loopy.

Similarly, the killer himself is a faceless (because of the death mask), voiceless, soundless, psychopath. His motivations, his history, the reason for his choice of "Princess" for his next target... they all need not be explained. He's perfectly summed by the line "some people's just rotten... they're just ruined right from the start." There you go audience. Why does he do it? Just 'cause. Now bring on the blood.

Basically, Laid to Rest uses all the right methods to forgo any attempt at basic storytelling, and this I can't have. From start to finish it's people running from place to place, panicked, scared, and anxious because a killer is after them, getting grossed out when they come upon mutilated corpses, yelling "what are we going to do NOW?!" and then dieing horribly painful and gruesome deaths... and absolutely nothing else.

So why not rate this highly? The murder count just reaches double digits, the deaths are relatively imaginative, the lead character is relatively hot but annoying enough that you want her to die, and the killer has a cool skull for a face. This is a slasher and people get slashed. What more do you want?

What this proves to me is that boiled down to its basic elements, I must not find gore all that enjoyable. I enjoy it when gore and death are metaphorically appropriate, and this can be as simple as "teenagers who have sex get killed because pre-marital sex is a dirty dirty sin" and I'd still be relatively happy. I have a Literature degree, I can spin from there.

But Laid to Rest is a slasher. A pure, unadulterated, mindless slasher. And much to my surprise really, I guess I'm not a fan of the genre.