"She's Crushed" Review - Written by Anthony T

She's Crushed
Year: 2010
Director: Patrick Johnston
Studio: Maverick Entertainment
Stars: Natalie Dickinson, Henrik Norlen, Caitlin Wehre;
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 90 Mins
Official Website: http://www.crushedthemovie.com/index.html

Yea, another torture porn horror film to review and slam to bits. It’s now starting to get really tiring that a lot of these sub-genre horror films keep from independent studios that’s sole purpose is to filled the screen with torture scenes instead of content and story. This time it’s “She’s Crushed”.

The film is about a twisted and tortured woman named Sara, who has her sights for her next-door neighbor Ray. First, they start flirting with each other, and then it turns into a one-night stand. The next day, Ray wants to put that night behind him, but Tara becomes more obsessed with him and is willing go to sick extremes to keep Ray all to herself. Ray is now caught in a situation where she is gruesomely murdering his friends and the fact that Tara won’t stop until she gets him all to herself.

“She’s Crushed” is a film that would have better served well, if this were a short instead of a feature film. The reason for that, this film comes off more like a music video with all the camera shots and the way that the pace of the film moves. Writer/director Patrick Johnston’s direction felt kind of rushed, as he going for more of style instead of substance. It was like; the direction was only focused on providing shocking imagery, instead of trying to the best out of his weak screenplay, which I’ll talk about in a minute. There is also no attempt to develop any chemistry or personality with the three main actors here. Johnston directs it in the characters felt they were so bland or they came out of various torture porn films.

Speaking of torture porn films, enough with trying to be next “Saw” or the next “Hostel”. The reason that those series work is that there is thought into the stories and the fact that the characters are interesting. Johnston’s screenplay was just flat in all aspects. The characters were not interesting, as they were annoying and their presence is overwhelming that its giveaway any chance for anything to be fully developed. While we’re on the subject, the film has characters didn’t make sense with anything going on. When your wondering about how each character fits in or not, you know that you have problem with your film. There are a couple of characters that to me felt out of place because there was very little information about them or their relevance to the grand scheme of things.

Another major problem that this screenplay has was the development of main relationships. The main love triangle isn’t fully developed because the screenplay rushes into the action. By doing that, I got the sense that Johnston was only interested in shocking scenes instead of creating a coherent story. It was really sad to see this screenplay lack any development, as this is a good idea for a story, but the execution was just horrible.

In the end, this is just typical bad horror film that has good premise, but the basics aren’t there for me to enjoy a film like this. “She’s Crushed fails on all levels to the point that you want to divorce this film from your DVD player.

Review Rating: One Star