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How entertaining? ★★★☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 12 August 2013
This article is a review of NO ONE LIVES. |
“I don’t lack emotion; I just process it differently,” Driver (Luke Evans)
Kicking off worryingly, a young woman in just her underwear runs through a forest screaming. Luckily, the filmmakers are lulling the audience into the cul-de-sac of low expectations. NO ONE LIVES is not a straight-to-DVD horror exploitation. It is a fun, gory horror exploitation, where refreshingly unlikeable characters inadvertently take on another unlikable character, who also happens to be a brutal killer with an array of gadgets.
Kicking off worryingly, a young woman in just her underwear runs through a forest screaming. Luckily, the filmmakers are lulling the audience into the cul-de-sac of low expectations. NO ONE LIVES is not a straight-to-DVD horror exploitation. It is a fun, gory horror exploitation, where refreshingly unlikeable characters inadvertently take on another unlikable character, who also happens to be a brutal killer with an array of gadgets.
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Back to the young woman, she is captured by an unknown assailant, though manages to carve her name into a tree for the authorities. She is missing university student and heiress, Emma Ward (Adelaide Clemens). Post intro, we meet good looking couple Betty (Laura Ramsey) and the monikered Driver. They’re on a road trip. Team NO ONE LIVES wastes little time in throwing in a sex scene. Do the rules of slasher flick production mean there must be at least a pointless one thrown in? At the same we meet a conscienceless gang of six who steal from and murder a wealthy family. Like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable action, they careen into Driver, capturing him and Betty and taking possession of his car and trailer. They quickly realise Emma is herself a captive of theirs. Oh, and they soon find out that he is equally amoral, and to quote Christopher Walken in TRUE ROMANCE, “In a vendetta kind of mood.”
“Where is he? You killed him right? Please tell me he’s dead,” Emma
NO ONE LIVES becomes a douche bag versus douche bags movie. As it is difficult to empathise with anyone on the screen, especially thanks to the leaden dialogue, the only option is to sit back and enjoy the blood bath. If James Bond’s quartermaster Q was a psychopath, he might have turned out like Driver. The latter has an array of devices in his trailer, which the gang forget to investigate. Their mistake. He uses his hi-tech tools to kill and torment them at their hide out in the middle of nowhere.
NO ONE LIVES seems both intentionally and unintentionally humorous, piling on the splatter with relish; and there is a particularly inventive use of a cadaver that had the audience in hoots. Come for the genre staples, stay for the nonchalant slaughter.
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