The Infliction (2012) Reviews

• Hey cool---Sid Haig plays a good guy!

  fred-2872015-11-21

  This has happened so seldom in his 55-year career that when he is presented in "The Inflicted" as a kindly avuncular psychiatrist, I was worried that the star/writer/director Matthan Harris was going to "pull a fast one" and have Haig's character turn out to be some Hannibal Lecter-type whack job, but I guess Mr. Harris figured one psycho character (plus a copycat) was enough. Haig is so warm and likable in this role that it once again seems a shame that career movie villains hardly ever get a chance at an Oscar nomination; Haig is that good, and I hope he plans to keep working until he's no longer with us. Also good is Haig's fellow Rob Zombie alumnus Bill Moseley in a more complicated role as an apparently well-meaning father who just can't regard himself as an evildoer. But other than these fine performances by these seasoned veteran performers, there's really not much to recommend "The Inflicted," a hodgepodge of so many other horror flicks I couldn't keep track of them all. As an actor I couldn't be sure if Mr. Harris is good at playing creepy or is just naturally creepy himself. He seems to be competing for the Dennis Hopper Most F-Words Award, forgetting that one needs Hopper's surreal charm to make that surrealistically charming. The plot is ridiculous, set in that alternate cinematic universe where criminals can go around doing anything they want as though they were invisible, and the police only ever appear in situations where they can be easily killed, without their colleagues knowing their location etc. One cop is played by an actor with a thick Italian accent with no explanation at all of how he wound up in Texas, which is the most amusing thing in the movie (probably unintentionally so). Near the end is a sequence in a mental hospital that reminded me of when I worked in one, with the drab institutional drug-enforced ennui hanging over everyone like a cloud. But even this is ruined when the killer appears standing atop the wall with a sniper rifle, again unnoticed by anyone. Please don't pay any money to rent this, but if it happens to appear on your cable on-demand service, I can recommend the parts with Haig and Moseley, feel free to fast forward past the rest of it.

• Cheap and unremarkable

  Leofwine_draca2018-02-27

  THE INFLICTED is a cheap and unremarkable serial killer thriller made on a tiny budget. A psycho killer befriends and then tortures his victims, some of whom survive and wind up in hospital. A team of detectives proceed to investigate and close in. Everything that plays out is painfully familiar, although the budget is a little bigger than many indies so this has a slicker, more professional look to it. It's chiefly of interest for casting a number of famous horror actors. Bill Moseley is here - as always - alongside the great Sid Haig, playing a good guy for once. HELLRAISER's Doug Bradley shows up as a cop and there's even a smaller role for that whipping boy of Italian exploitation cinema, Giovanni Lombardo Radice. The actors are the only real reason to tune in.