Year: 2006
Duration: 01:27:24
Directed by: Juan A. Mas
Actors: Damon Abdallah, Brooke Bailey, Sean Cook
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Axe, o Concerto Sangrento
Description of the Choke movie: A crappy band turn up at a crappy venue, but are unable to play any crappy songs due to the absence of their guitarist – who’s probably crappy. Mikey, the fret-fiddler in question, is absent ‘cos an unseen assailant had earlier ventilated his body courtesy of a big, fuck-off drill bit applied to the spine.
A rapidly exhausted booze supply leads to a mass exodus of pissed-off, unpissed punters and the band members find themselves alone in the club with its owner, a slimy git called Guy, and his slutty girlfriend Starr. Things get a lot worse when they are locked in the building with a … deranged killer. Bet you didn’t see that coming!
As usual people do stupid things in order to further the plot, and allow the thinning out of the cast. Characters constantly find the flimsiest excuse to split up from the rest of the group, all the better to be picked off one by one. Unfortunately, the nutter they’re locked in with has the worst work ethic for a serial killer since the bad guy in this film, meaning the running time has to be padded with lots of shots of people walking through badly lit corridors while talking incessantly.
To be fair, despite the presence of a glaring red herring among the cast, the film Choke does a reasonable job of obfuscating the killer’s identity. Unfortunately the characters are generally so unlikeable it’s hard to care about their fate, and whether they’re killer or killee (yes, thank you spellchecker, I know that’s not a real word – now fuck the fuck off). The only notable exception is ‘London’, a plastic, ‘look at me, I’m so dark’ goth played by Brooke Bailey in the manner of Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, but with more swearing. Despite being as two-dimensional a stereotype as the rest of the cast, she is much more endearing thanks to a nice line in sarcasm and an impressive range of sneers. And the slutty rock chick outfit probably helps too.
It’s not a total disaster; some of the dialogue is quite funny in a cheesy, I’m-groaning-with-you-not-at-you kind of way. However, given how talky the film Choke is, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the script occasionally hits the mark. It’s certainly not as clever as the producers seem to think (as witnessed by the end credits featuring fake interviews with the performers, in character) but, like I said, it does have its moments.
A bigger problem is that the film is pretty coy in delivering the goods. There is one sex scene, shot in a way designed to reveal far too little flesh.
When the bloodshed isn’t limiting itself to aftermath shots the violence, inflicted with an array of weapons including the band’s own instruments, is mostly portrayed with various blood squibs letting fly, with the points of impact taking place out of frame.
Sticking largely to the clichés, there are few surprises here, including a painfully obvious Final Girl. It could have been pretty good if the producers had pruned some of the dialogue-heavy script and cranked up the exploitation elements. As it is, it’s merely a “meh” kind of film, not totally without merit but hardly worth getting excited about. Anyway…
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