Frayed (2007)

The deep dark secret motivating Kurt to kill and kill again is his abuse when he was a child. His abuser is the seemingly good-guy sheriff. All this is made relatively clear at film's end. There are 2 competing levels of reality through the first 95% of FRAYED: the metaphysical, in which Kurt can assume the forms and demeanors of those around him, and the usual, everyday reality. In the metaphysical, Kurt is some sort of supernatural being, an Evil Thing with the sewn-together face of a clown-thing. (Move over Michael Myers, Leatherfaces, and others of their ilk.) In his everyday guise, Kurt is the policemen or security guard or trustworthy neighbor next store. Why this excellent horror/thriller has not yet spawned a sequel is odd. It's not too late. PHANTASM (1979) took almost a decade to spawn Universal Studios' PHANTASM II (1988) {in those films an Evil Thing, "The Tall Man,"is portrayed by Angus Scrimm). Maybe horror fans will eventually be able to see an extension of FRAYED, a 2007 independent film. Fright fans can hope so.

Frayed is set in a small town near Washington called Yellow Glenn where teenager Sara Baker (Alena Dashiell) & her friend Veronica (Tascha Smith-Floe) head out into the woods to meet up with their boyfriends & party the night away. Meanwhile Sara's father Sheriff Pat Baker (Tony Doupe) has to face up to the fact that his homicidal son Kurt is being transfered from the local mental institution to a larger one in the city, however Baker receives a call that Kurt has escaped & one security guard is dead with another one missing. The local police under Sheriff Baker begin a search but soon find a trail of dead bodies that lead them to Sheriff Baker's house where his wife & daughter are being paid a visit by his killer son...Co-written, co-produced & directed by the duo of Norbert Caoili who is also credited with the music & editing & Rob Portman who himself also gets a stunt double credit(!) this horror thriller starts out like a Halloween (1978) clone but quickly turns into a mess of ideas that never come together. The script tries to be far too clever & offers up lots of silly twists which range from predictable (the security guard not being who he claimed, I mean that foot in the bushes at the hospital grounds had to belong to someone, right?) to mildly effective (the twist about who really killed Kurt's mother was reasonable but even then though the motivation behind it was baffling, OK sure the guy is a paedophile but Kurt's mother never actually saw anything so why kill her? Why not lie? What made him think Kurt would say he had been raped by his own father yet not mention the small matter his own father murdered his mother in front of him?) to the absolutely ridiculous (the end totally pulls the rug from under the audience's feet & basically says the crap you have just sat through for almost two hours was completely made up by some nutter & none of it meant anything as it didn't actually happen & was made up) & with several of these ever increasingly annoying twists coming during the last ten minutes it becomes quite frustrating to watch & put everything together in a coherent way. The other big problem with Frayed is the pacing, at one hour & fifty minutes long it drags badly & not enough happens. The script tries to juggle teen parent problems, the relationship between the Sheriff & his new wife, the search for Kurt & a security guards wandering around looking like his dazed. None of it is very engaging & as I said it's just far too slow & uneventful.There really isn't much in the way of horror here, the body count is low & apart from Kurt's mother getting her head bashed in at the start all the kills are off-screen. Ouch. Forget about any decent blood or gore as there isn't any & there's no nudity either. The comparison's between Frayed & Halloween are there to see, a boy murdering a family member, the boy put away in a mental institute, the boy escaping & heading home to pay his old family a visit & murder a few people along the way. While Frayed ultimately goes in a different direction the two films are similar but while Halloween is a classic Frayed definitely isn't & never will be.The opening sequence shot through the point of view of a camcorder is quite effective but it's shame about the rest of the film I suppose.Filmed in Washington the IMDb says Frayed was shot in 2005 but not screened publicly until 2007 & not released on DVD until 2009. The acting is average, no-one stood out for me as being particularly good or bad.Frayed is a horror thriller that rips-off Halloween but then tries to go in it's own directions with a few film destroying twists which range from predictable to just plain horrible. I didn't like it, it's neither a slasher nor a thriller despite wanting to be both & ultimately doesn't satisfy as either.

Son of a sheriff who bludgeoned his mother to death, an event caught on videotape, is sent to a mental hospital. Years later he comes home and the killings continue.Only loosely similar to Halloween this is an odd little film that doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. Certainly it doesn't have enough material to cover its almost two hour running time. I kept looking at my watch while this was running. The story jumps around between now, then and inside the mind and memories of the various characters to the point that its not always clear as to who is who and what is what. For some people this makes it scary for me it just makes it confusing. I'm not a fan. Other than the opening moments where we see the mother being beaten to death I don't think this really has any scares or tension.I'd take a pass.

I watched the movie over the weekend with a group of my daughters' friends (about a dozen kids all in high school). It was great to watch a horror movie that I enjoyed and they did too.The film really is a thinking person's horror movie, and I really appreciated the fact that they didn't dumb it down or insult the intelligence of the audience at any point in the film. There are very few movies where I really respect how the filmmakers treat the audience, and this is one of them where I do. Frayed pays homage to some of the earlier slasher movies, but never appears to be copying them. There are some of the standard scary movie ingredients, but the plot goes way beyond what you expect from a horror movie. The filmmakers were able to take a favorite genre of their own, and make something really creative.The other thing that really impressed me was the production quality of the film especially when considering the budget constraints of making it. In particular, the special effects were amazingly well done. The thing that most impressed me about the digital effects was the fact that I didn't know most of them were digital effects. After the movie I watched the very brief overview of the special effects and was surprised by some of the things that were done on the computer rather than on the set. This was very well done and I believe the special effects guys deserve huge kudos (and an award for one specific scene) for their accomplishment.The best endorsement I can give the movie is that I want to watch it again. I know I missed clues and I want to see the movie at least one more time to see what I catch that went over my head the first time. In addition, everyone knows how impatient high school aged kids are, and they not only enjoyed watching the movie, but they watched it again that evening because they all really wanted to see it over again that night.As for the very violent scene that occurs early in the movie, yes it is uncomfortable to watch. I believe the team earned an award for that one, but they probably won't get one since it is in a small independent movie. The scene is very difficult to watch or even think back to, which is why I recommend watching the bonus feature on that section of the movie. Watching the character/victim in the make up for the final stage jokingly saying "I'm ready for my close up" helped ease the discomfort that the filmmakers were trying (successfully) to make everyone feel.I recommend watching it with a few friends so you can bat around ideas after the movie. That really helps everyone figure out what actually happens. Frayed goes way beyond a standard slasher movie genre with a tight complex plot, great cinematography, good acting, and remarkable visual effects to deliver a great horror movie.If the same team makes another movie (which I hope they do), I can't wait to see it.