INBRED

SPOILERS DOWN T' TROUSERS

Much as I despised Hobo With A Shotgun as one of most repulsive and borderline walkout-worthy films in years, it's a shock to find a movie - again programmed at FrightFest - that's actually even more of a trial to sit through. Nominally it's a bad taste gorefest but it's really just a tiresome parade of thoroughly dislikeable characters, inept gore effects, poor acting and with no real point beyond insulting the intelligence of the viewer. For all the wannabe League Of Gentlemen rural weirdness, Alex Chandon's "film" isn't funny - there's not one single flicker of a smile from start to finish - and for all the emphasis on extreme violence it isn't even slightly shocking or upsetting. It's actually rather pathetic.

Inbred has four young offenders on some kind of ill-advised rehabilitation programme somewhere in the wilds of Yorkshire, with their ineffectual "hey, kids" supervisors. But it's not long before the offenders revert to type and behave like repugnant dicks, and the locals are revealed not just as eccentric, but malformed homicidal imbeciles (thanks, presumably, to centuries of inbreeding), and they don't take kindly to strangers, like, sithee. Who will survive, what will be left of them, and will anybody give a damn?

Not really. None of them are worth any interest or attention, and here's a measure of just how much I really didn't care. Halfway through the indifferent Vile, one of the nastier characters is punched square in her face and there was a round of applause. During Inbred, I couldn't even raise one tiny nod of approval when the most repugnant of the four young troublemakers suffered a brutal, protracted and humiliating death. Even when the arse-scrapings of humanity were being spectacularly exterminated, I still couldn't rouse a shred of interest. All the kill sequences are achieved with astonishingly poor CGI - the standard you might expect have expected from the likes of Asylum and Syfy about ten years ago - so there isn't even any decent grossout.

Throughout the film I was equal parts bored and annoyed. But I was also left feeling insulted: the makers clearly feel that any old rubbish will satisfy because it's a horror movie in a horror festival - it doesn't matter about character or performance or writing if there's some nasty-minded violence in there, and it doesn't even matter if it's done badly because they'll watch anything. Well, thanks for underestimating. Look, I love a flat-out gore movie as much as anything or anyone, but gore by itself isn't enough. The best flat-out gore movies still have heart and wit and character, and Inbred doesn't have any of that. It's shameful, it's absolutely, unforgivably abysmal and it's one of the very worst of the last few years.

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