Customer Reviews

Live Animals

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Live Animals is an ultra-low budget kidnapping/torture/horror film with a one-line plot, no twists, no shocks, little gore and lots of tedium.

There's really nothing to recommend it. The villains are dull and the victims duller.

Skip it.

I've seen thousands of movies in my day. I am a HUGE horror fan. I must say I actually drug my ass out of bed to the computer to write this review. I bought this as part of a 4 pack of movies for $5 bucks & I'd probably say I would maybe have agreed to watch this piece of crap for oh, say, $50 bucks. If somebody would give me $50 bucks, I would say I'd waste my time with this dreck. As it stands, I paid $1.25 for this thing. Not only is the money a total waste...the hour & change I wasted on this utter garbage is time I'll never retrieve. I'll grant you, making a film with zero budget is a tedious task that you do for the love of it. But this film has no redeeming qualities. Even the end kill of the stupid bad ass is a cop out. Instead of making a cheap bladder head of the creep to saw to ribbons, they cut away to some cheap jack blood spraying around. Man oh, man do I wish I had never opened this DVD since now I'm stuck with it. There is no going back. I am actually pissed off beyond belief that I wasted time & money on this thing. If my review makes you long to see how bad it is...please for the love of all humanity...avoid it like the plague. Not only is it shoddy...the worst offense ever that a cheap horror flick can be it is...BORING! Top 5 all time wastes of time & money in my middle aged life. Good riddance. Maybe I can get some fool to buy this sheite on Ebay.

A friend of mine rented this for sheer giggles and we watched it on a lark. Based on the premise and the package, I got exactly what I expected: an impossibly further low-rent attempt at capturing that same magic woven by modern horror cinema...ahem...powerhouses such as Saw and Hostel. What I got was a micro-budget trash-fest, complete with hapless actors and a slipshod script. I got a gaggle of characters I couldn't have cared less about, no plot to be found, and one of the worst examples of prosthetic make-up I've ever seen, that being a character boasting a crescent-shaped scar on his face, which looks more like a smeared mess of melted Snickers bars.

I find these movies offensive. I find them offensive because they are unoriginal. I find them offensive because it really showcases that young filmmakers are not concerned with trying to scare the audience anymore, instead finding themselves content to throw as many breasts and buckets of blood at you as they can in a (mercifully) short 90 minute-or-so runtime. That so many of these filmmakers are not striving to grasp that brass ring and create something, instead happy to grab last week's leftovers and regurgitate it all over your television in a poorly-shot mess. That these filmmakers and their equally abysmal screenwriters don't mind depriving their narrative of a discernible point of interest, an end-goal, characters to care about or root for, and feel justified in calling their happy little nothing a story by throwing in a "gotcha" twist toward the end--even if you saw it coming a mile away because, and let's face it, that's what everybody else is doing, and that means it has to be an effective tool in the storytelling process, yeah?

And even if I were that guy, that fella who is first in line at the cinema for the opening of the twelfth Saw sequel, drenching my popcorn in red Karo syrup and gasping orgasmically at the sight of paper-thin characters miraculously made full and packed with meat and bone if only for the purposes of it being spilled on some warehouse's floor, I would still be offended by this film. Because it does what no movie that has nothing going for it other than that promise that its content will shock and revile you by way of sheer brutality should do. It is simply boring and useless. And by that amazingly low standard of trying to be the red-headed stepchild of something that is unabashedly unimportant and totally reliant on gross-out moments, this film cannot be seen as anything less than an utter and complete failure.

While watching this hideous mess of a movie, I kept thinking: God, I need a shower after all this along with a good scrubbing with lye soap. It made me think that this is the kind of a nightmare that John Waters would have made back in the day when he was tripping on acid.

You know the story-line: a group of brain dead kids are kidnapped by a sadist to be sold as prostitutes and body parts. I mean, haven't we SEEN this idea about a million times in the past five years in movies like "Hostel" and "Turistas." Those movies look like "Gone With the Wind" compared to this bare bones exercise in boredom. The characters act like no humans I know of. Instead of trying to avoid the wrath of their captors, these idiots scream and spit in the faces of their captors and then act surprised when these monsters retaliate.

When they have a chance to escape, the captured idiots manage to only knockout their captors--yes, the very same goons who thought nothing of cutting out tongues and limbs. So the goons naturally recover and go after the captors and butcher them into tiny pieces.

This movie really looks like a college project, made with no money and starring a cast of locals. That alone shouldn't have made this movie so horrible. There are numerous examples of brilliant horror/slasher films made on tiny budget that really triumph--like Angela Bettis "Roman" and the larger budgeted "Whisper."

Wow, I need that shower really bad now!

I hate worthless zero budget crapfests like this. I would ask that indie filmmakers stop asking their friends to write glowing reviews for these worthless productions. Its misleading and shameful.

okay, for an american redneck rip-off of the Hostel movies, this was not too bad. so, somewhere down south a redneck captures 20-something-year-olds, tortures them, breaks them, crates them up, then sells them as slaves...a pretty blatant rip-off of the Hostel movie genre, but not as elegant (in that bloody, gruesome way). this movie was still fairly well done. i didn't really recognize any of the actors, but i don't get to the movies as often as i should. the premise is pretty much the same as all the movies in this new shock genre. like the Hostel movies, this flick would have benefitted from a lot more torture and gore...there was a certain amount of blood, which was nice...a little bit of brief nudity...there were some brutal and nasty moments. the premise was handled well, with a good script and acting on everyone's part that pulled the story together. i've seen other Saw and Hostel movie rip-offs lately that really failed to pull off their original intent. this movie was fairly well written, acted admirably by everyone...and although more torture and mayhem would have been nice, it is a flick that deserves to be seen. the movie starts with the kids getting captured during a party that starts outside...after opening with a glimpse at the main antagonist...the capture scene was very good...then after the kids see what they are up against, of course they try to escape. i won't tell you whether or not they succeed...i don't want to ruin the movie for you. so to wrap up, as far as the new influx of shock movies based on the popularity of Saw & Hostel goes, this is a pretty decent rip-off of the genre...it's not as good or elegant as Hostel...it certainly isn't as good or as brutal or nasty as any of the Saw movies...but it is a decent stab at the genre...fairly well written, directed and acted...where Hostel deserves 8 out of 10 chainsaws, and the original Saw deserves 10 out of 10 chainsaws...in my psycho rating, i would almost give this flick a solid 7 chainsaws...almost. pretty good...grab a chainsaw and watch it with someone you love.

Live Animals (Jeremy Benson, 2008)

Live Animals isn't necessarily a bad movie, really. It requires something of a strong stomach, and you have to be used to low-budget horror films to really sit through it. But neither of those things make it bad by default. Where it really lost me was in its almost aggressive lack of doing anything original with a subgenre that's already tired; in fact, you've seen the Big Twist(TM) in a couple of other "torture porn" films. Which raises the question: why on earth would you bother sitting through this one?

Plot: a bunch of young-and-beautifuls are abducted from a party by a white slaver. They have to try and survive/avoid becoming crazy or mindless.

Yep, that's it. You've seen it before, usually done better (Hostel, Turistas, et al.). The only "original" aspect to be found here is the white-slavery bugaboo that's been used to scare kids and travelers for generations without there being any documented evidence of same since, roughly, American colonial times. Suspension of disbelief can only be taken so far. Leave this one at the bottom of the pile until you've seen every other torture porn movie in your collection. * ½

So a group of young adults get kidnapped and tortured so they would learn to behave then once broken they could be sold off to a slave ring of some sort..one would think this would be fairly intersting, graphic, gut wrenching and ect...however...I found this movie to be extremely boring. My friend announced what he thought was going to happen and he ended up being correct in his assumption. The insane woman in the stable was annoying with her constant singing and also by keeping her there instead of doing away with her leads the viewer to believe she is more than what one would think. Also, if this is suppose to be some sort of torture/horror flick, I found the torture sceens to be sort of bland.

Wouldn't recommend watching or purchasing this movie. It had good reviews, but it wasn't entertaining at all. There was no story, and it wasn't scary or disturbing. Don't believe the good reviews, someone's just trying to make a sale. I fell for it, but I have a habit of buying crap movies in hopes of finding a jewel in a pile of rubble...anyways, this isn't one of them.

Horrible movie. Horrible acting. Excessively melodramatic. Very predictable plot. One of the worst movies I've seen in a long time.