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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Chop (2011)

   Lance Reed's (Will Keenan) car breaks down and he accepts a ride from a stranger (Timmy Muskatell) who, he finds out shortly after, has a grudge against Lance for something he did years earlier when he was a worthless crazed crack addict.
   I'll start by saying Chop is more of a dark comedy than a horror movie.I really had no intention of writing a review when I sat down to watch it, but I loved it so much that I felt I couldn't pass up the chance to share the craziness I endured.
   Lance introduces himself to the seemingly helpful stranger who has just picked him up but the stranger doesn't bother to offer his name ( his name is never revealed). When Lance thinks the stranger notices, he informs him that he has a glass eye from a childhood car accident.Lance asks the stranger if he will drop him off in town where he can have his wife pick him up and mentions that his half-brother sold him the car that just broke down on him.The stranger asks Lance who's life he would save if he could only save one of them and then asks him if he's ever been shot by a tranquilizer gun, and you can guess how that turned out.The stranger then takes him to a place where he has Lance's brother tied up and tells him he has to kill his brother to save his wife.After Lance kills his brother the stranger shows him pictures he's taken of Lance's wife and brother having sex. As some strange form of torture he tells Lance that he has to go home and pretend he knows nothing of the affair and if he finds out that he's said anything to his wife he'll make sure the cops find his brother's body.
   Three weeks later Lance is having a hard time pretending not to know about his wife's indiscretion and tries to coax a confession out of her.Seconds later the stranger calls and tells him he knows he didn't honor their deal and detectives Williams (Adam Minarovich) and Roebuck (Tamil T. Rhee) show up later to inform Lance that they found the body of his missing brother.The detectives show Lance the pictures the stranger took of his wife and brother that they found in his dead brother's pocket and ask him if he knows the woman in the pictures.Lance's hilariously unconvincing and nervous reaction to their news arouses suspicion and they ask him if he can go into the station soon to give them a DNA sample.Lance tells his wife, Emily (Tanisha), the news of his brother being found dead and her reaction sends him and his old crack pipe that he held onto after getting sober on a search for drugs.Lance changes his mind and returns home to find the stranger in his home posing as a cable man.The stranger kills Emily and a drugged Lance later wakes to find that his left hand is bandaged and missing a finger.Just as he's realizing what just happened, Williams and Roebuck knock on the door and when asked about his finger, Lance blames it on a lawn mower accident.The detectives would like to question his wife but he tells them she'll probably be gone for a while (more like forever). Lance agrees to to show up at the station to give his DNA sample at 3:00 the next day and the detectives discuss with each other that he's probably killed his wife as they're leaving his house.Lance, now at his wits end, pulls out his trusty old crack pipe and starts tearing his house apart after smoking looking for more , going as far as...how should i put this?...um...he gives himself a cavity search (There! I said it! Yeah, my jaw dropped to the floor then I paused it and laughed hysterically, then I had to rewind and watch it one more time.Don't judge me!!).
   After waking the next day with a syringe sticking out of his neck and finding his left hand now has only a thumb, Lance decides to tell the detectives what has been happening.Williams and Roebuck, even though they don't really believe him, stake out Lances house that night and fall victim to the stranger.Once again Lance wakes to find the stranger has drugged him and taken more fingers and he's now left with only two thumbs.When Lance asks how the stranger knew that he talked to the cops the stranger informs him that he has a bug planted in Lance's glass eye.He drugs Lance again and takes him to an undisclosed location where he ties him up and plans to continue torturing him until he remembers what he did to him and apologizes.Lance tells the stranger that he wasn't sure at first and he was ashamed to admit it but he remembers him.Lance tells him the story of how he was having a bad day because he had no money for drugs and he hit him with his car and robbed him, and is still carrying around his money clip engraved with the name "Ray Fielding". As it turns out, the stranger is not Ray and is very irritated by the fact that Lance still doesn't remember him.The stranger looks Ray up and calls him offering to let him chop off Lance's leg to make up for the leg he lost when Lance hit him with his car.Ray (Mark Irvingsen) shows up with his depraved pedophile cousin Jeff (Jeff Sisson) to exact his revenge but when Jeff wants to chop off Lance's leg and have sex with the stump it's too much even for the psychotic stranger so he asks them to leave, kills them when they refuse, then chops off  Lance's leg himself.
   When the stranger later mentions he had a daughter that was taken from him Lance thinks that Tammy (Elina Madison), a hooker he accidentally killed, must have been the stranger's daughter. Again he's wrong and loses his remaining leg to the hooker's lover Stephanie (Malaya Manson) who the stranger tracked down after hearing Lance's story.Lance now fingerless and legless begs the stranger to kill him but he wants to know what he did to him that was so terrible.He refuses to tell Lance what he did stating that dying without knowing will be his final punishment and injects Lance with poison that should kill him in one minute or so.Right before Lance dies he finally remembers and I won't tell you what he did.You absolutely have to watch Chop and find out for yourself.
   So, I know it seems that I've given away most of the movie but I really haven't.There is so much more to it and the laughs are nonstop.Chop was laden with with the kind of sick humor that I crave and take part in on a daily basis (Again, don't judge me!!). Will Keenan and Timothy Muskatell did an excellent job and though there wasn't much gore, the little that they did have to offer was at least quality.Chop is definitely in the top ten of the funniest movies I've ever seen and Netflix's 3.2 out of 5 stars doesn't do it justice.I say it deserves 4.8.

1 comment:

  1. Growing up in the Philippines, I loved all kinds of movies. We had a very healthy film industry there when I was a child. It's now gotten very limited. They only make action movies and hard-core exploitation movies. Women get raped; men get shot.

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