Seemingly pro-vegan get even gore, where a pig slaughterhouse has its shackles and sharpened blades turned on humans instead, Bereavement derives homicidal urges from grief that is in no way good. A pathological prequel to Stevan Mena’s 2004 cult murder spree Malevolence, the movie returns to the suspect assembly line filet of fetching female scene of the grime, for a little fleeting nature versus nurture debate between rural unneighborly torture chamber sessions.
Spencer List is Martin Bristol, a six year old boy kidnapped from his Pennsylvania backyard in 1989, and never seen again. Five years later, Martin is still being held captive by depraved serial killer, Graham Sutter (Brett Rickaby), who has long inhabited his intimidating deceased father’s abandoned, rundown slaughterhouse.
Sutter, who favors young hotties as his hacked up prey for reasons that are never explained, also inexplicably allows the curiously mute boy to live and serve as involuntary apprentice to his dastardly deeds. Though Sutter is possibly fascinated by Martin’s rare affliction, a congenital disorder that prevents him from ever feeling any physical pain. In other words, if Sutter can’t experience the thrill of torture from a silent victim who’s hardly terrified and could care less, why bother. And furthermore, should either maniac be blamed for their behavior as childhood victims of awful paternal role models, surrogate or otherwise?
Also never explained, is how Sutter seems to be depopulating this barely inhabited rustic farmland community of its young women, without ever raising suspicion or even causing alarm among the local authorities. And counting among the disappeared, nosy high schooler Allison (Alexandra Daddario, currently into underage flirtations in Hall Pass), an athlete who appears to be the only human in the vicinity inquisitive enough to snoop around the brazen butcher’s property, while jogging by.
Though Mena has described his brand of sadistically sliced up human brisket as therapeutic, there’s quite a fine line between allaying audience fears, and titillating them. While the question of whether or not all these chuck chopped homo sapiens served up raw will drive moviegoers to become orthodox vegetarians, is not exactly relished food for thought.
Crimson Films
Rated R
1 star
