As Good As It Gets

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I was one of the investors behind this movie and I am proud of how it turned out. 5 stars. This movie has all the twists and turns that keep the movie goer on the edge of their seat. The set up for the movie is as good as it gets. As a reviewer said. "I am about to recommend a torture porn movie. I am like a lot of fans, I am so sick of gore and torture that is meaningless. And a big percentage of low budget movies use this in the place of a script and character development. As a horror fan, you just get sick of being cheapened by companies and films that just give you nonstop killing that you don't know who is being killed or why you should care. Sutures, is torture porn. But, it builds the characters, and tells a great story and even shares a lengthy back-story into the victims and the victimizers. You understand the motives of capturing people and selling their organs or using them to save a patient. The movie had a few scenes that I felt were ingenious, in terms of torture. The closer this movie got to the end, the more it started to lose steam. The first hour, I felt were good, not the best or worst but good. The last twenty minutes, is where the movie started to try to hurry to the finish line. Try to get everything in before the credits. I felt if the movie was 10-15 mins longer and slowed down a bit, it would have been so much more effective. This is from Tammi Sutton, who produced Dead and Rotting, what a fun movie that was. Its not boring, nor does it ever drag. It just needed more time. But, I liked it and can say I would watch it again."

Sienna, stuck in a hospital bed regales her interviewer with her tale of how she ended up there. Months earlier, her and her friends are vacationing in a charming isolated castle not realizing that a enigmatic man is following them in the hopes of harvesting their organs to sell on the black market. There more to it, but that's the general gist.The acting is sub-par but in this genre on this budget that's easier to overlook. Something i can't though is the story which is haphazardly sutured together. Granted this seems to be more of a deliberate decision than general sloppiness, but this doesn't make the movie any easier to digest. Couple this with a nonthreatening Gothic type bad guy and a nonsensical 'twist' ending and you're left with a movie that's simply not the sum of its parts.My Grade: D+Eye Candy: Kate French (?) gets topless

Sure, there are a handful of horror movies out there worse than SUTURES. Between them, Uwe Boll and Ulli Lommel have phoned in dozens of misshapen monstrosities in the name of fright, after all. But, as Gertrude Stein once said, a turd is a turd is a turd, no matter what else you may care to label it as. Apparently the producers of SUTURES thought they were making a campy version of DALLAS, in which multiple generations of "doctors" built up a financial dynasty based on the black market for stolen body parts. In actuality, they ended up with a poorly-acted flick totally lacking in continuity. Though it comes off more like an effort at HOSTEL-style torture porn, the confusing plethora of "doctors" (no less than 16 are credited at the end of this feature, not to mention 4 nurses and 2 orderlies) indicates that filming was so confused even the extras were quitting mid-scene (no doubt muttering "I'm not getting involved in crap like this!" as they stormed off the set). Nick Holmes, as one of the six road trippers at the core of this story, apparently walked out on his death scene, as he just "disappears" without a trace early on. The twist at the end of this flick makes absolutely no sense, if you consider it for two seconds or longer. The basic premise of the movie is scripted out of the final two-thirds, as the stolen body parts are left to decay in a WRONG TURN-type hillbilly pantry while the dozen-plus doctors compete to see which can elicit the most pain from "victims" before that group of actors can enjoy the only reward SUTURES offers: release from the clutches of a totally incompetent crew.

"Sutures" is setup with layered flashbacks to tell its constantly revolving tale along the lines of a thriller, though this takes a gruesome turn and gives its salutes to recent horror such as "Saw," "Turistas" and "Hostel" if still not being exactly alike.After being found wounded, a traumatized woman is admitted to a hospital where she proceeds to tell a detective her story about her friends of late twenties--three guys and three gals--who went on a retreat to a remote lodge. Does some hillbilly attack them? Do their cell phones inconveniently die? Not quite, the dwelling is a small castle--you read right--and the only backwoods fellow turns out to be much friendlier than "Texas Chainsaw" and "Hills Have Eyes" guys. Instead, the out-of-reach area is used to the advantage of a mysterious, dressed-in-black man who's simultaneously comely but dangerous; think "Dust Devil" meets "Vampire Hunter D." They're rounded up and then the tortuous fun begins at a clandestine location that harvests organs on the black market.There's little quips and humor used to break the ice, and then, of course, there's explicit blood and gore inflicted after getting an introduction to the characters. It's cringe worthy and there are logical explanations for it--e.g.: anesthesia leads to traces in the body--though it's hard to say if the filmmakers effectively set up fellow feeling or even believable scares, as it moves so fast that there isn't enough time to scratch the surface of their personalities or even show that a scenario or place of operation could exist like this. Kidnapped while in your own backyard or getting caught in a tourist trap in an unfamiliar third world country seems more threatening. The remote location is more tongue-in-cheek to backwoods flicks and the scenario is more chance than premeditated. Not the stuff nightmares are made of as it doesn't put the audience in their shoes.There are not only flashbacks of the woman in the hospital telling her story, but also flashbacks within flashbacks to show even more backstory. It gets confusing as to the what's what and who's who, as it jumps back and forth and injects ambiguous dialogue to throw the viewer off in the meantime. Not to mention a key character appearing drastically different than when they were younger/older, and not explaining how certain siblings were conceived stunted surprises. For what it's worth, the film was steadily paced and did manage to cut away any hanging fat. Conflicting: yes. Boring: certainly not.I've served my sentence with a lot of low-budget and shoe string cinema in horror, so I got a chance to see the worst of the worst in passing to hopefully see the best. This, however, falls somewhere in between as it was filmed professionally with some hand-held and even crane techniques. The cinematography was well thought through and even helped set a little bit of mood. There's no poor overdubs that were recorded in a non-reverbed room, or can't-see-you lighting lapses. The acting was pretty consistent and believable, especially with a really charismatic, over-the-top villain played by Andrew Prine who acts like a stage performer with an audience. This started out more promising, though the mechanics of the story caused it to jump ahead of itself and brought down the significance and impact of the rest of the picture. (Also submitted on http://fromblacktoredfilmreviews.blogspot.com/)