INBRED

A small group of young people with behavioral disorders, accompanied by two psychotherapists, heads to a remote village in the Yorkshire countryside to spend a few days of isolation away from urban distractions. They do not imagine, however, that they will soon have to deal with the strange and inhospitable local population, intent on turning the outsiders into the main attraction of their sadistic and perverse village festival. "Inbred" is already seen! Absolutely nothing new under the sun, or rather, under the gloomy and disenchanted sky of Yorkshire. Throughout the duration of his film, Alex Chandon does nothing but propose situations and characters seen and revisited in an unlimited number of horror films. As tradition dictates, we are presented with the usual group of unpleasant young people destined to become cannon fodder, the usual remote village far from civilization and ignorant of what progress is, and the usual surly rednecks dressed as loggers who chew tobacco. As you can see for yourselves, there is absolutely nothing new served on the table. But expecting novelty from a film like "Inbred", that is, a "series C" film aware and eager to be so, would be like shooting at the red cross. Chandon's film has no pretensions other than to entertain lovers of extreme horror cinema who consider the beauty of a film directly proportional to the amount of blood spilled during the scenes. The story is really reduced to the bare minimum, there is no intention to delve into any situations, and the characters – good or bad – are only stereotypical caricatures useful for filling the scenes and delivering the right line at the right moment. Everything is left to the effectiveness of the murders staged with imaginative and memorable theatrical performances during the perverse village festival. Heads chopped off with an axe, exploding bellies, carrots shoved up the nose until they reach the brain, faces that are pulverized by the hooves of a blind horse... in short, the splatter abounds serenely to satisfy all lovers of gratuitous violence. To make the splatter feast even more interesting, there is the substantial dose of irony that pervades much of the film, a cheeky but not overly intrusive irony useful for tempering scenes that are as extreme as they are absurd and to communicate once again the boisterous spirit that drives the entire film, nullifying any artistic pretensions. It is only a shame that, without the ironic-splatter component, "Inbred" has absolutely no more ammunition to fire. The film, written by Chandon and Paul Shrimpton, sometimes exceeds in a somewhat lackluster narration giving the impression that one really does not know what to say in those small pauses between one killing and another. While the story that drives the entire plot, as thin as it may be, nevertheless suffers from the presence of enormous script holes that could have been easily filled with a little effort. At the end of the film, one does not know what the reason is that drives the members of the community to behave in this crazy manner, but above all, one does not know how the villagers manage to carry out certain traditions (festivals similar to fairs where they kill in public anyone who sets foot on their lands) and get away with it without anyone intervening, as if nothing were happening. Little else can be said about this film that can be considered without too much difficulty a kind of undeclared British remake (in co-production with Germany) of the much more famous "2000 Maniacs" by Hershell Gordon Lewis, which in turn has already been remade by Tim Sullivan with "2001 Maniacs" and its respective sequel. If you are lovers of splatter and are looking for a film to watch with your brain turned off, then go ahead and watch "Inbred", but if you do not really fit into this category, look elsewhere.