The Afflicted (2012)

I really liked this film! Don't get me wrong... it's not enjoyable or an easy film to watch but I highly respect how disturbing and depressing this film was. I originally wanted to watch it on Netflix because I saw Leslie Easterbrook is in it (I'm a big fan) and what I found was a riveting, well-performed thriller. Some elements of the film were a bit hard to believe but all in all I wasn't disappointed. If anyone gives this movie a lousy rating just for being disturbing than they don't understand that it was supposed to be disturbing. This isn't a happy family film. In fact, it's a hopeless film all the way through. There's no playing with emotions here. This is a heartless story about a human monster.

A story of incomprehensible abuse delivered by an explosively violent mother of four. Journey through the mind of a child that experiences a living hell, defined and defended by the twisted religious beliefs of her mother.Leslie Easterbrook is a crazy mother, a role she takes to heart, and had it not been in an otherwise disposable movie, she would have been receiving wide praise for her performance here. She is, we see, a consummate professional.It is nice to see Kane Hodder without a mask (or even gloves to hide the burns) and some decent lines. His acting is never fully appreciated, and this film is a good example of his ability to shine. If only his role was bigger.

THE AFFLICTED, A Mother's Love Has It's Limits.Starring : Leslie Easterbrook and Kane Hodder.Pretty amazing film about a dysfunctional family to an extreme of violent proportions.The mother,Leslie Easterbrook, Is cruelly perfect in this role : Shades of 'Mommy Dearest & Jason's mom from Friday The 13th'.Kane Hodder has a wild role as the HELPLESS ? father/husband who is catalyst to plot.This film has such intense scary moments, It could be Brain Damage biggest release to date.This critic felt that the child characters could have changed their demise and yet When the brother did what he did,Oh We get it now….

Maggie (A great, if slightly manic performance from Leslie Easterbrook, aka Callahan from Police Academy!) is a god fearing Christian woman, married to Hank (A nicely done cameo from Kane Hodder). When their marriage fails, due to Maggie's uncompromising fire and brimstone style views, Maggie becomes bitter, resentful and beset with financial woes. Taking to the drink, she begins endlessly watching the public access TV show of the Cowboy Preacher (JD Hart), who comes to visit at times. Spare the rod and spoil the child, the family must stick together, is what the cowboy preaches from Maggie's TV.As the financial difficulties worsen, Maggie begins to fancy she can converse with God, and that her children should pull together, and chip in anyway they can. If that means doing things they normally wouldn't do, then so be it. And if any dissent ensues, well, Maggie is more than willing to dispense her own quite vicious brand of discipline, because spare the rod, and spoil the child, after all...The Afflicted is a well shot and well acted horror, with good performances all around, from a nice cameo from Hodder to an excellent (if again, slightly ott) performance from Easterbrook.It's also pretty grim, with a bleak tone, and will probably inevitably draw comparisons with The Girl Next Door. However, my main beef with this was that it requires serious suspension of disbelief, and I'm actually wondering if it really is based on a true story as it claims or if this is just a marketing ploy, the way Wolf Creek was supposedly based on a true story, when in reality it was simply loosely influenced by a number of true life cases.The kids, who are all between 17 and 18, one of them a guy, have ample opportunity throughout the film (at least by default anyway) to either escape, report or even overpower Easterbrook, yet don't. This detracts from any tension, and makes it hard to take the whole thing seriously. Most if not all of the supporting characters outside the family are stereotypical rednecks, and towards the end, you're just kinda waiting for things to finish.The Afflicted isn't precisely a bad film, it's more of a flawed one, but overall, I found it neither stand out or substandard. It just failed to leave a lasting impression on me, well made and well acted that it was. 5/10 probably worth a look actually, to make one's own mind up.