Offspring (2009)

When a family finds themselves under attack and eventually kidnapped by a gang of cannibalistic children and taken back to mate with, the local police force and several friends of theirs who escaped must help rescue them before they become food for the group.This was quite an exciting and enjoyable effort with a ton of great features. Among the better elements with this one is the rather demented feeling on display here which is due to the sheer, utter brutality found with the cannibal tribe. Fleshed out to a greater degree than most other tribes of this kind, that allows for scenes like the first visit to their lair where we get to see their social structure as well as how they're going to go about on their plans as well as their overall appearance during the majority of the attacks in here really makes them quite shocking and chilling. That behavior is really helped out here with the fact that there's plenty of dark, thrilling scenes here that not only spell out the group's strange behavior but also manages to feature a lot of really disturbing and brutal attacks. This starts off with the absolutely fantastic opening attack on the couple in the house as the clan visibly and quite nicely goes after them throughout while the relentless attacks and stalking about the house leads to great action as chaos makes this incredibly fun which leads into the fun car attack outside to end this great scene. Likewise, the scenes in the woods as they're watching the group through the forest before the tense brawl and central abduction while other big scenes include the beach- walk ambush, a great encounter along one of the dirt-roads and finally the outstanding brawl in the tree-house for the finale which is great fun as well. The centerpiece of it all, though, is clearly the big encounter in the lair as a second sequence inside goes above and beyond by ramping up the gore with the eaten body-parts strewn all over the place and the beat-down of the friend, the encounters with the husband to try to get her out and the overall demented air about the scene which carries through from the rest of the film which makes this one so enjoyable. That attitude, along with the brutal and utterly bloody kills and the rampant nudity make this one so good that it holds off the few flaws in here. The biggest issue here is the sheer confusion regarding the tribe, as this one has no real purpose for them to there as the randomness of the attacks just seems so arbitrary and disorganized that there's more confusion rationalizing everything than there really should be. Even more confusing is their past history which seems to be non- definitive about how they came to be and where they came from, how they came to be cannibals and how they learned their weaponry tactics. The only other problem factor is the lame family drama in the first half which really hurts the overall pace in those scenes.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Full Nudity, Graphic Language, a Rape and children-in-jeopardy including threatening actions towards infants.

Fronted by the fame of Jack Ketchum "Offspring" does no favours for the man behind the idea. In a small lavishly situated in North-Eastern USA woodland area just next to the ocean, numerous series of morbid murders and disappearances have occurred in the span of the several generations. In the latest of them a young couple and their baby were brutally murdered and than dissected for meat by a group of roaming savage cavemen teenagers. But the carnage is only just begun, as apparently this is feeding season...Devoid of proper pacing or acting "Offspring" puts all its money on one card: visceral brutal gore (including fairly graphic disembowelling, burning people alive, baby-killing, brain-munchies and a very disturbing biting off of a vagina). The plot that crudely staples the movie together is a whisker away of falling on top of itself, mainly due to some inept back-story, where apparently the police know about these 'cave-men' for decades, but just didn't have the proper motivation (?) to do something about the issue. Irrespective of how many people, including children, go missing due to their activities. Any doubts regarding this wanton incompetence is cast aside by a statement, that the wild people roam freely across the border with Canada and there is no exchange of information between the two countries.This would however at least presume that however wild our rapturous cannibals may be, they still have a strong sense of self-preservation. Which unfortunately goes amiss at the start of this debacle, when they go on a killing spree and do not even bother to cover up their tracks, hence bringing about a hunt (however misguided it may turn out to be).Mingling in between this nonsense is a yuppie group of cardboard characterisations, which only benefit to the story is that they turn out to be useful for nondescript morbid murder and torture (although I fail to see why a women breastfeeding someone elses baby would result in her screaming in agony and despair, but well... I ain't a woman).Obviously filmed on a shoe-string budget and unfortunately the only thing that the creators were adept at was making proper disgusting and adequately gory special effects. Within the confines of the lack of money and filmmaking skills (strongly suggesting this was in all essence a student film) this pastes together to become quite an overdrawn, predictable and tiresome affair with substandard cinematography, lighting, sound, editing and acting (complemented by overflowing cheesy dialogue).

After reading several positive reviews of this film I tracked it down because I thought it sounded interesting. It wasn't, it was dumb.There's a tiny town somewhere in America where a gang of cannibals are living in a cave on the beach. These cannibals all have clothes made of animal skin like cavemen, despite living close enough to civilisation to steal some clothes from a washing line every now and then. Also if you're making clothes out of animals why not eat them instead of people and if you're having to resort to cannibalism it might not be such a good idea stealing babies and making your group larger, stupid idiots. Anyway these guys talk in some stupid growly language and have names for each other like eartheater and other dumb crap like that. When they talk their growl language you get really rubbish looking subtitles come up on screen. All their dialogue is embarrassing tripe designed to make you cringe.The cannibals attack a house full of inadequate actors. One of which has their evil ex husband on the way to the house, who within ten seconds of meeting this character you know he's gonna side with the bad guys at some point. Oh and by the way if you don't burst out laughing as one of the stig kids comes through the window of the house and cackles like a little witch as the camera zooms towards it's face then you've just missed out on the only joy this film has to offer.There are scenes of torture which are neither scary or harrowing just stupid due to the fact they're so over the top. The gore in this film is so crude, with bits of leg here and a rubber torso there. The fact it's done in such a straight way makes it even stupider because the whole thing just becomes laughable. The longer the film goes on the dumber it gets. It's just one ineffective scare or anticlimax after another. My partner got so bored she started doing a puzzle. I braved it through to the end and wished I hadn't.This offspring should have been drowned at birth.

"Offspring" is based on Jack Ketchum's sequel to his gruesome novel "Off-Season".It tells the story of a cave-dwelling clan of cannibals who prey for human flesh and babies along the rural Maine coastline.Years after foiling the clan's first rampage veteran cop George Peters suspects a cannibal resurgence after the discovery of a pair of slaughtered corpses.Then the family with a small baby is attacked and the fight for survival begins...Very bloody and faithful adaptation of "Offspring" with the script written by Jack Ketchum.It's loaded with graphic violence and gore including disembowellings,brain removals and even genital chewing.The villains are corny,the torture scene is quite nasty and there is even a small cameo by Jack Ketchum."Offspring" is not as good as "Red" or "The Lost",but it's more gory and violent.8 out of 10.