A slasher film. Greek Style: Razor (2007)

Razor (Greece, 2007)

rating: *

starring:  Zoe Alexouli, Elisabeth Boutraki and Yolanda Dimitriou

Greeks shows how much they know about
slasher flicks, which is good but...

If you've read my blog for quite a while in your spare time, you would know I'm a very open person when it comes to a Country's first slasher. I would be sympathetic to their efforts and would try to give as much of a fair review as possible. Movies like Russia's Trackman, Japan's Evil Dead Trap, and even the underrated Rabies of Israel have a favorable review from me for their effort to try and handle a genre so simple, it's often underestimated. But then, there are those title who tried too hard to impress.

Razor is Greece's so-called first English language slasher, made with zero-budget, sluggish pacing and very tedious kills, the basic ingredients of a very terrible movie.

It starts off with a shot of a haggard-looking lady on bed toying around with a razor blade, which she hid away when a man walks in and, as the man began to assault her, used to cut off his dick. The girl's mum later walked-in from the screaming, spots the man bleeding to death but quickly figured out that he was raping her, so she picked up a pair of scissors and stabs him in the chest. So far, not a single word was uttered on that scene alone, which would have been a sign of impending doom, but I venture on in hopes I might be judging it too early.

Then next thing we're shown is a bunch of grown men and women trying to act in English, something about them visiting a friend over the seaside for some R&R. Or at least, that's what they're trying to do. They had a Greek Salad dinner (which, I guess, they just call it "salad" there...), then a gratuitous sex montage, and next thing you know we got a psycho with a hammer and razor viciously slicing them open one by one in tune of some heavy metal rock music. God, I hate it when they do it to Heavy Metal music...

The problem of Razor is that it's too ambitious; they tried to make it as gory and nasty as possible, presumably to compete in the gore-loving cinema of today, but with very little budget to pass around, the so-called nastiness or gore is reduced to no more than some guy repeatedly slicing people with a shaving razor before killing them, which is not as brutal as you think it is, and doing no other variation of a kill other than that. And as if the movie's pacing is terrible enough, these kills takes forever to commit that it gets tiring to watch sooner than you think. It's torturous, yes, but we're looking for a slasher flick here, not Torture Porn, so I don't find people being tortured to death with a razor while rock music is playing to be scary, fun and/or impressive.

Now, I'm not bashing this effort, I'm just saying it could use a load more of work and brains. It's too cheesy to be taken seriously and at the same time, tries to be serious that you couldn't help wonder if we're supposed to laugh at a scene or wince in terror, wherein a slasher flick would often rely on either one for it to work. And then there's the part where the director thought it would be a great idea to let the cast speak in English so the rest of the world would understand the film, which is sweet but it made the movie very distracting with the accent, and I really had a hard time trying to decipher what they just said. (Y'know, possible clues to what's going on with the movie and junk?)

Maybe it's just my taste that made me rate this one so low, seeing I'm a guy who had seen even the most obscure slasher/thriller flicks (and lived), and it would probably find a fan, who may or may not had read this review first, who can appreciate this Greek effort of a slasher movie (Just hope the next guy who would watch this and give it a high rating isn't speaking for a friend involved in this film), but yeah, execution-wise, Razor is a terrible movie and a possible waste of film space.

Watch at your own risk.

Bodycount:
1 male stabbed with scissors
1 female dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male throat cut with razor
1 female axe to the chest
1 female head bludgeoned with her own dismembered leg
1 male killed
1 male tortured with razor, dies of heart attack
1 female dismembered with buzzsaw
1 male dismembered with axe
1 female hacked to death with axe
total: 11