Real Killers (2000)
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This is the first film from Convent director, Mike Mendez. This is a very strange movie. You think you know what's going on and then all of a sudden it takes a weird turn into even more weirder shit. It's fun to watch, but the story is a bit hard to follow and that's what I think the movie's major flaw was. The film starts out with a news report of two brothers, who killed their parents while they were in bed, escaping from prison. Then film then focuses on the brothers and a local family. Later on we see that the brothers decide to take the family hostage for really no apparent reason. The movie gets weird when the wife and daughters seem to idolize the two killers.
That was when the story kind of lost me. I couldn't tell if the killers knew the family prior to coming to their house or not. Apparently it was all just a coincidence. The story takes an unusual turn when the family turns out to be killers themselves. The two killers are then thrown into some underground dungeon beneath the house and are forced to not only fend off against the family, but also the dwellers from under the house. I thought that maybe things would be explained later on in the film, but nope. I couldn't understand why there was such a place under a suburban home and who or what the people were that lived there. They seemed to be cannibals and it all reminded me of the movie, People Under the Stairs. I start to lose track of the plot at this point.
The acting is good for low-budget movie and the directing is well done from Mike Mendez, but the plot is the movie's weakest point. That's also the reason for me giving it a 6-rating. The movie had a lot of good gun-fighting action and killings, but that's about all it had. I enjoyed watching the brothers go on a rampage with the guns and it was interesting to see the family owning an arsenal of weapons. I'd like to see what Mike comes up with next.
Not a bad direct-to-video. This is a good movie at first, but starts to lose its edge when you lose track of what's actually going on. There is nice action and twists, but the plot is its weakest point. Check this out if you're into something weird and different.