"Excision" Review - Written by Anthony Thurber

Excision
Year: 2008
Director: Richard Bates Jr.
Stars: Teresa Rose Ferrer, Karen Tiegren, Carley Hobson
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 19 Mins
Official Website: http://www.excisionfilm.com/





“Excision” is a short film that won various awards, at some of the top-tier horror film festivals, such as 2008 Shockfest International Film Festival (Best Mini-Short Film, Best Actress), Eerie Horror Film Festival (Best Short Film, Best Actress) and 2008 Sacramento Horror Film Festival (Best Short Film).

The film is about a teenager named Pauline (Teresa Rose Ferrer), who doesn’t get along with her parents (Karen Tiegren, Paul Fahrenkopf) and has a sister (Carly Hobson) that suffers, from a disease called cystic fibrosis. It commands all of her parents’ attention, which makes her feel that they’ve neglected her. Pauline realizes that her sister would eventually need an operation done to correct the problem. She thinks that she can perform the operation herself, so Pauline begins to set forth a chain of horrifying events that may either save her sister’s life or turn into one big nightmare for her.

“Excision” is a very demented and interesting character study piece. Writer/Director Richard Bates’s Jr. does with making this film and story twisted. He does that by using surreal imagery, while taking a look at a character that is tormented with teenage life. This style helps made me very interested in the film’s story, as the shock value was very high here. Bates also does a very good job with the direction of his actors, especially with lead actress, Tessa Rose Ferrer. She did a great job making her character very demented, as her character was tormented and mad scientist like.

The main thing that I liked about this film was the fact that Bates makes this story more of a character study. He does that fact, by developing why the character acts, in a weird state of mind. Bates explains that by doing two things, First, he goes into the rocky relationship that his character is having with her parents. That was done, to show that she had parents that really treated her like a person, who didn’t exist. Finally, he also examines the character through the weird dreams she has at night. That was done, to help build her obsession with wanting to become a surgeon and wanting to do the procedure herself. Another thing that he did well was to develop the relationship between the main character and her young sister, as it gave another reason to the main character’s madness with wanting to operate on people. All of those were explained effectively, which makes this a very interesting and twisted horror film.

Excision is a twisted short film that might make you want to think twice before going into surgery.


Review Rating: Five Stars