Live Animals - Not Worth Living Through

       Quite simply, Live Animals is an over rushed, highly underdeveloped horror film about the kidnap and torture of young adults, who are either murdered or sold into European brothels.   There’s really not much else to say. I purchased the movie on a DVD collection entitled Hillbillies and Hatchets, and yes I suppose that should have been a red flag regarding low budgets and bad action. The second red flag (which was really my first) was that Live Animals is only 80 minutes long.  Some movies can be well played out in an hour and a half, but this movie is most certainly not one of them, especially when it’s 10 minutes shy of the standard movie length.   But at only $5 I took the gamble; at the very least I still have 12 other movies in the collection to get to.

​

​

A brief synopsis...

                Live animals centers on a group of young adults go to a party and get kidnapped, locked in barn stalls and tortured.  Eventually one is sold off to a European brothel while the rest are left to either die or escape.  Out of nowhere another victim just happens to show up in another stall and she’s bat shit insane.  Eventually the brother escapes and frees his sister, and the two debate on whether to free this unknown stranger.  She’s a liability, but also a fellow victim.  Against the brother’s better judgement, his sister unlocks the stall and the three find a car and drive to a house down the street.  While the brother’s looking for a phone, the girl runs off looking for a lighter for her cigarette, and against my better judgement – let the bitch leave! – the sister quickly follows after her.  This is when the movie finally starts to get interesting.  Not too surprisingly, the girl is in on the kidnappings and somehow the only one to survive until the very end of the movie.

​

​

A whole lot of bad...

                 There was absolutely no character or plot development whatsoever in Live Animals.  The movie opened with two older gentlemen and ominous music, instantly alerting the audience that either one or both of the men were involved in the kidnappings.  We were then introduced to a brother and sister, who are talking about going to a party.  It’s safe to assume this is where the kidnappings will take place, and when the scene abruptly cuts to a bonfire, the camera switches to a voyeuristic view as well. 

​

​

       Ok, back up.  Not even 10 minutes into the movie and I was already plagued with a multitude of questions.  Who are these kids? Names? Ages? Where are they? Where is this voyeur in relation to where they are?  What goddamn season is it?! While that may not seem important, it is.  Are they on summer vacation, winter break, spring break? College dropouts?  The audience has absolutely NO clue.   Cabin Fever might not be the standard for young adult vacation horror, but I couldn’t help comparing it to Live Animals the entire time.  At least with Cabin Fever the viewer’s basic needs for character and plot development were quite nicely met.  We had names, back stories, and enough information to actually become engaged in the story.  With Live Animals, I would have turned it off after those first 10 minutes if I hadn’t committed myself to reviewing it for this blog. 

​

       All that aside, this “horror” movie wasn’t particularly scary either, nor were there enough squirm scenes to at least make it worth watching from a gore standpoint.   Along with the horrible character development came extremely bad and unbelievable acting.  Not only was I not concerned with what happened to the victims, I was annoyed at such bad casting decisions.  Did the director even hold auditions, or just hire some friends and random strangers off the street? 

               

       Case in point; the main mastermind behind the kidnappings.  What’s his name you ask?  I don’t know!  Even IMDB doesn’t know!  He’s credited as “Feed Store Clerk (as Jon Sparks)” but the actor’s name is Jon W. Sparks.  Is he playing himself?  And if so, did the cast and crew make it out alive or should we send out a search party?  Mr. Sparks is hands down the most unthreatening movie villain of all time.  He showed very little emotion throughout the entire film, and then when he did, it was too little too late.  Yet we’re supposed to believe he’s sadistic enough to plan the kidnapping, torture and enslavement of these victims?  I don’t think so.  However, that does bring us to Edgar, but more about him later.

​

        As I already mentioned, Live Animals wasn’t especially gory either.  Bored with the subpar plot, I excitedly anticipated one young gentlemen getting strapped into a nasty looking head vice and having his tongue brutally cut out, just to have the scene skip to a bunch of birds on a rooftop with screaming in the background.  Such direction happened entirely too frequently throughout the 80 minute film.   Potentially movie saving scenes were consistently cut away from, and too much music overlay with not enough dialogue further separated the viewers from the already 2D characters.  Did the director want this movie to fail?  The cast were getting killed when we thought they were safe and escaping when we thought they were chained up.  Yes, this is part of a movie’s suspense and surprise, but when these scenes are repeatedly cut short, it seems more like a coward’s way of dealing with an underdeveloped plot line than a calculated effort on the director’s part to wow his viewers.

​

​

And a little bit of good...

       Yes, surprisingly there were some redeeming qualities in Live Animals.  Not necessarily enough to sit through the film, but enough that this review won’t be  100% diatribe slamming what could have been an otherwise decent  movie.

       

       Since I already mentioned Edgar I’ll start with him.  If Mr. Feed Store Clerk was the brains behind the operation, Edgar was the force behind it, and thankfully, he fit the part.  Bigger and much more intimidating than his elderly cohort, Edgar looked like the type of villain that would actually kidnap, torture and sell his hapless victims.   Not only that, he seemed like a genuine person, and not the typical “know it all” hunter of prey.  He licked his lips excitedly when he thought he had someone trapped, and he scratched his head in confusion when someone else escaped.  It was nice to see human emotion, and even nicer that for once a killer couldn’t miraculously hear someone breathing when they were hidden in close proximity.

               

       The only other good thing about this movie was the little bit of gore that was actually shown.  I would normally have a “squirm scene” section for a movie like this, but for Live Animals I’d need a failed squirm scenes section instead.  Easier, and a hell of a lot nicer on my part, to do the opposite in this situation.  The best, and perhaps the only real, gory scene was when the brother had his (I believe) middle finger drilled off.  It wasn’t overly gory, and it was more the disturbing amputation factor that had me cringing more than anything. Aside from that, there were only some noteworthy gore clips, which could have been full out squirm scenes had the director decided to take the time and attention to fully develop them.  These included the sister getting her throat slit, another victim getting shot, and when the brother took a saw to the eldest villain.  Unfortunately we didn’t see the actual contact, but the blood splatter was still good for a cringe and a laugh.

​

Verdict...

       Well there you have it.  Is an overall verdict really necessary at this point?  Live Animals  was downright awful.  An otherwise decent plot was poorly developed and even more horribly casted and acted.   The short running time made it almost impossible to turn it into a movie worth watching, but perhaps I should be thankful I didn’t wind up wasting any more of my time than an hour and twenty minutes.