“CHAOS” (2005)

Starring: Kevin Gage, Stephen Wozniak, Sage Stallone, Kelly K.C. Quann, Chantal DeGroat, Maya Barovich & Ken Medlock
Written & Directed by David DeFalco
Razor Digital
Official Website

Polly Staffle Rating: *

The marketing for David DeFalco’s “Chaos” claims it is “the most brutal movie ever made.” I couldn’t disagree more with that statement. In fact, it is too horribly made to have such an impact. Don’t get me wrong, there are two extremely disturbing scenes in the film, but take these two moments out and you have yourself a bad made-for-television remake of “The Last House on the Left.”

First planned to be an actual remake of Wes Craven’s 1972 shocker, DeFalco’s project originally carried the working title “The House in the Middle of Nowhere.” David Hess, who played Krug in Craven’s film, was even slated to star at one point. But not far into production, Hess left and it was decided there were enough original elements that DeFalco’s plagiarized script could stand on its own. I for one am glad they took that approach. We already had one Craven classic “The Hills Have Eyes” tainted with an awful remake. No need to destroy all the guy’s credibility.

Craven’s “The Last House on the Left” is actually quite a brilliant film. It deals with the theme Craven has used a number of times - everyday people pushed to the point of being vicious animals. It’s a humanistic film about brutal violence made during an extremely angry time in our country. It shows us how far the love of one’s family can push someone to do horribly evil things to avenge or protect, and how quick a helping hand can turn to suffocate the mouth it’s feeding.

DeFalco’s film completely misses the boat with this element. Trying to distance itself from “Last House,” “Chaos,” also made during an angry time in our country, pretends to be better than mere exploitation. It wants to be educational and helpful, but fails painfully. I felt like I was being lectured by “South Park” counselor Mr. Mackey throughout the movie. “Drugs are bad, mmmkay,” as Mackey has said a number of times on the series, but DeFalco’s lecturing doesn’t stop there. “Racism is bad, mmkay. Don’t talk to strangers, mmkay. Raves are bad, mmkay. If you go to raves and talk to strangers and try to do drugs, you’ll get killed and your lifeless body will be raped, mmmkay.” And in between the lecturing, the film stops to show the breasts and genitals of two different women being mutilated. The two cruel moments of violence, which are supposedly inspired by actions of serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins, are unnecessarily overplayed and done with no tact. They come out of nowhere. Unless you are a woman hater, the deaths come off as disturbing, but quite pointless. They don’t really add anything, but shock for shock sake. They seem completely misplaced in this otherwise tame cautionary tale, which even opens with a warning claiming the film could save your life.

The story centers around two girls Emily (Maya Barovich) and Angelica (Chantal Degroat) heading to a rave out in the woods. The girls leave the event to go get drugs with a stranger and instead of getting high and returning to the party the girls end up being viciously murdered by a wannabe infamous gang. The bad guys here have silly names like Chaos, Swan, Frankie and Daisy and want to be seen as cruel, menacing and pure evil. Instead of coming off as a cannibalistic Charles Manson family meets “The Devil’s Rejects,” the group just seems cliché, unlikable and more laughable than scary. But then again the characters of Emily and Angelica aren’t likeable either, so the actions of Chaos and his gang really don’t have much emotional effect on me. None of the roles are written very well and the acting is quite awful, including Sylvester Stallone’s son Sage. The founder of Grindhouse Relasing plays the role of the son of a bigger and badder man.

Kevin Gage as the title character is the lone exception to the films awful acting. He does the best he can with the terrible lines of dialogue he is given. Some of them seem stolen and butchered from other films like “Natural Born Killers” or “House of 1,000 Corpses,” but I couldn’t exactly place the Rob Zombie or Quentin Tarantino screenplays the dialogue bits were lifted from. One thing is clear though, Gage does have screen prescience. He comes off as a cross between Sid Haig and Vin Diesel, but I wish he was in a better movie with a halfway decent script. Chaos is never really given a motivation for the things he does and he has no redeeming qualities, so no emotional connection is made with him either. I didn’t find myself rooting for him like the scum of the Earth characters in Zombie’s and Tarantino’s films, nor do I fear him or cheer against him like the villains of Craven’s catalog. Sure evil exists without reason every day, so I’m not saying you have to have a charismatic murderer with a hidden agenda. But unless you are making a straight up horror movie with a character like Jason or Michael, presenting a cardboard killer doesn’t work. Especially when you haven’t fully developed any of your victims.

Once the girls are dead, “The Last House on the Left” element kicks into overdrive as the bad guys conveniently end up at the last place they would ever hope to have stumbled across, so a chainsaw can be whipped out on them. The cops then bust in and we get a hilariously bad everybody shooting everyone “Reservoir Dogs” rip-off finale. Instead of feeling scared or sad once the whole thing was over with, I felt like going to a rave out in the woods and hooking up with a gay serial killer so I can be tortured and killed to erase the misery of watching such a crappy film. The more I think about this movie, the more I actually hate it. It had no suspense, no tension and is one of the most pretentious pieces of trash I’ve seen since “Elephant.” It’s the sort of vile entertainment that gives horror, exploitation, gore and message films a bad name. Perhaps a better and more accurate statement for this film to market itself with is “the most brutally bad movie ever made.”

Writer and director David DeFalco, who dubs himself “the Demon,” is a former wrestler. The official site for “Chaos” brags about how DeFalco has been “permanently terminated from the 24 Hour Fitness gym chain in Los Angeles due to members being in fear of their lives with him working out there.” My advice was going to be that he should go back to his previous career. But since it’s so hard for him to find a place to work out, he might want to give up the entertainment world all together.

- CCF, September 2006