A French horror film that is also a not so subtle political message. (Hint: George Bush gets mentioned.)
This is a combination of Hostel and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In this case, the family is a bunch of Nazis (yes, those Nazis).
A group of thieves find themselves in the Nazi hostel and the killing starts. My immediate problem with the film is that right away you realize that there's no way this family has killed as many people as implied. They just have no plan for killing folks. The 4 kids are able to do way too much damage due to the disorganization of the Nazi family. And come on, they're fucking Nazis! Shouldn't they be uber disciplined?
Each Nazi family member supposedly has a back story of some sort, but the film never goes into them except to show that there might be lingering tension.
Ditto for the 4 kids, but I couldn't follow what the hell was going on. Not sure if the translation was bad, but characters seemed to change mid-film.
The gore is here and then some with some incredible special effects. I'll even say the acting was decent, aside from the main character's very odd "zombie shamble".
However, it isn't enough to bring this film out of the shadow of those that obviously inspired it.
It's a great effort in special effects and acting, particularly for an indy film, but the writers aren't as smart as they think.
Oh, and if someone takes a shot to the fucking jaw with a sledgehammer, they shouldn't be walking around and talking without even a bruise 5 minutes later...
3 out of 10.