The Violent Kind (18) 87 mins **This grungy horror pic from the pseudonymous Butcher Brothers – real names: Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores – has a great B-movie title, a workable set-up (Sons of Anarchy meet The Exorcist) and flickers of originality, but struggles to pull them together into anything remotely coherent. Members of a California biker gang, played by actors their own mums would have trouble recognising, gather at a house in the woods for a night of beer and yahoo hijinks. The party mood is soured when one female partygoer turns up bloodied and bruised, and – in a grave lapse of etiquette – promptly rips out another guest’s throat.
The Butchers – following up promising direct-to-DVD debut The Hamiltons – clearly have energy to burn, but their logic fails them here: TVK’s second half becomes an altogether different drive-in experience, with the arrival of psychotic Fifties teenyboppers who showcase fun wardrobe choices while never making sense as characters. With crucial exposition going AWOL, any genre smarts get buried under an excess of fanboy enthusiasm: it’s the work of directors determined to cram all their favourite things – switchblades! Nuclear explosions! UFOs! – into one movie, without having a plot to hang them on.
The Violent Kind is now showing in selected cinemas.
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