Laid to Rest

Okay, let's face it: If you're thinking about watching a horror movie in the slasher subcategory, you're not searching for a think-piece on the dangers of unresolved Oedipal complexes. You're not looking for a movie to challenge your way of thinking. You watch these movies for lots of killing, bad acting, and the plot, well...is there ever really a plot?

It'd be easy to say that Laid to Rest is another dime-a-dozen slasher movie, another entry into a misogynist genre that's been overdone since the late 1980's...but that would ignore the vast efforts put into it by the director, his wife, the cast, and the crew.

The Director: Robert Hall, owner of the special effects company Almost Human, made this film for two reasons. He wanted to make his first horror movie, and his wife needed her first starring role.

The Lead: Bobbi Sue Luther, to me, is known for her role in Star Trek: Enterprise as a green-skinned Orion Slave Girl. She's been in countless men's magazines, and even became the face of St. Pauli Girl beer in 2007. She also co-produced this movie.

The Film:

The movie starts off with a heavy metal riff, and we see an MTV-video style montage of young nubile women getting sliced up in various ways. We see events from the aspect of "The Girl", a young woman who wakes up in a coffin with no memory of who she is or how she got there. Over the course of this horrifying night she forms an alliance with two men, Tucker and Stephen, who do their best to protect her from our unrelenting antagonist, a killer known as Chrome Skull.

I was expecting a slaughter-fest, and I was not disappointed. Chrome Skull got to use a variety of weapons: a steel rod, a shotgun, tire sealant, and of course, his trademark brass knuckle knives. The most vicious kill in the film, by far, is the one against Lena Headey's character Cindy. I was COMPLETELY unprepared for her facial reaction...the knife twists in her temple, her mouth opens and her eyes dart about. As the knife comes out, her right eye is completely bloodshot. I'm used to special effects that cut away and take the cheap way out, but this put it right in my FACE. Bravo!

I got a case of the giggles whenever Chrome Skull came on screen - he looked like Timothy Olyphant from Hitman with a shoulder camera he borrowed from The Predator. That probably wasn't Robert Hall's intention, but it made Chrome Skull a memorable character for me, whether scary or not.

Some things irritated me during this movie, such as the editor's quick-cuts. I'd see a full segment of Chrome Skull killing someone, but if I blinked, I'd miss the 13 clips pasted together of him getting stabbed in the eye at the mortuary (yes, I counted). The dialogue from most of the characters was pretty bad, but then again, I wasn't expecting a David Mamet film.

The ending was a pleasant surprise, giving me some answers but begging more questions. Usually I keep my brain turned off during a slasher film but this one made me switch it on at the end. How diabolical of you, Robert Hall!

DVD Treatment: At the beginning of Laid to Rest, there are a few movie ads:

(1) Lightning Bug (Robert Hall's directorial debut)
(2) The Alphabet Killer (Directed by Rob Schmidt, who directed Wrong Turn)
(3) Crowley (Known as "Chemical Wedding" outside of the U.S.)
(4) Tokyo Zombie

How about them Extras? Well, there's a lot to be found here:

(1) Commentary track with Bobbi Sue Luther and her husband Robert Hall - Robert never tries to hide the fact that he's making a slasher film and doesn't try to build it up to be more than it is. The commentary focuses on him and his wife being able to make a movie with a core group of friends and a non-existent budget. I enjoyed hearing their stories about the use of "Smash! Plastic", the difficulties of a few interior window scenes, and the kindness of Cookie Moreland, among others. The bit about filming in houses with black mold was kind of creepy, though.

(2) The Making of Laid to Rest - We get a brief interview of each character in the movie, and several crew members. Everyone shares their serious and goofy sides while discussing the film. Thomas Dekker even got to compose some music!

(3) Torture Porn - the SFX of Laid to Rest - No, this isn't a segment about Eli Roth: the makeup effects supervisor is named Erik Porn. He showcases the creation of Chrome Skull, the bodies in the film, various head molds for special effects, and more.

(4) Deleted Scenes - I loved the intro with Nick Principe doing Roy Batty's speech from Blade Runner, but this could have gone in the bloopers section. There are only a couple of scenes here - nothing to write home about.

(5) Bloopers - A typical blooper reel, everyone looks like they're enjoying themselves and not getting frustrated.

(6) Trailer - The trailer that piqued my interest in this movie!

You might think independent horror movies are a waste of time, but remember: a filmmaker named Sam Raimi started out shooting low budget horror movies like The Evil Dead, and he's now making multi-million dollar movies about some teenager in Queens who got bit by a spider or something.

Laid to Rest gets 3 stars, but the efforts of everyone involved pushes it to 4.

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"I woke up... in a dead box... And the man tried to get me."

LAID TO REST: Bobbi Sue Luther plays a girl who wakes up sealed in a casket. Suffering from head trauma and memory loss, the girl soon finds herself running from a frightening figure in a metal skull mask with a video camera propped on his shoulder and wielding a scary big honking knife. Fleeing the funeral home, the girl does get help from several helpful strangers, but really that means fudge-all when it's an unstoppable killer hunting you down. So cue the vicious slashing, pour out the viscera, tally up the body count. Can the girl survive the night?

Okay, first, if you can get thru the exasperating opening sequence - in which the clearly disoriented girl actually has the sense to call 911 but then inadvertently causes the phone to disconnect before the dispatcher can trace the call - then you're in for a decent scarefest. During the Unholy Writers' Strike of 2007, f/x makeup artist Robert Hall put in the time to write the story to LAID TO REST and the result is fairly watchable stuff. I also dig that the atmosphere at times leaned towards the quirky (mostly in the scenes with Sean Whalen). The horror genre tropes are well covered, but the solid execution and the inclusion of several nice character moments elevate this one. The key players have more depth than are usually given in slasher flicks, although it's a bit jarring to see Kevin Gage landing the "good guy" part for once (and a "gutted good guy with a cane" part, at that; when I say "gutted" it's meant that he suffers a devastating loss, not that he has his guts spill out; that happens to someone else). Sean Whalen, the odd nerd crippled by his grief over his recently dead mother, resembles Steve Buscemi so closely it's as if Steve Buscemi had gotten it on with, er, Steve Buscemi. The ancillary characters, of course, are stock meat puppets. And with Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker having small roles, it also feels a bit like a TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES reunion (Bobbi Sue Luther herself actually had a cameo in that show's "Goodbye to All That" episode).

Credit to LAID TO REST for looking as good as it does, considering this is only Robert Hall's second directing gig and that there wasn't a lot of money that went into the film. The location reflects this shoestring budget. The story takes place in an isolated rural town and its surroundings (the city is a hundred miles away), an ideal kill zone for the freak in the silver skull mask. There's an undertone of mystery percolating in the film. I like that there's no backstory introduced for the serial killer Chrome Skull. Sometimes I think it's more disturbing and effective when we don't learn the underpinnings to a guy's deranged traits.

To quote Sean Whalen in an interview: "It's more of a mystery, too, because she's trying to figure out who she is, and why she's so hot." Another thing which keeps us hanging on is that we don't learn the identity of the girl until near the very end. Bobbi Sue Luther, in real life the director's wife and also this film's co-producer, is the lead actress in LAID TO REST and, while she doesn't quite sidestep the conventions of her girl victim role, she manages to weave in elements of pluck and emotional range. But, yes, she does her share of running around in a panic, screaming and crying and bleeding but looking good throughout. In fact, it's a wise move that for most of the film she's wearing a large shapeless shirt; otherwise, the male audience would've been too distracted (I know I would've been). Chrome Skull, who tends to occasionally have blood leak out of his eye (or eye socket), is a terrifying presence, a nightmarish monster I'd rank just a few tiers below horror icons like Freddy, Pinhead and Jason Vorhees. The silent Chrome Skull, technologically savvy (he records his kills) and able to throw off injuries like they were tickles, is solid as a Big Bad, but he needs to be in more movies to merit a higher level of cult status.

Gore hounds will drool over the gratuitous kill scenes, some of which are gruesome and graphic indeedy. Particular standouts are the first kill (halfway out the window), the "Baby, I would never cheat on you. And I never have - Shuuunk!" moment, and the tire sealant scene.

There are moments of frustration; in low budget horror films, that's almost a trope. But three sequences really annoyed me. There's the aforementioned opening scene with the 911 call. And, later, the girl leaves her comrades-in-peril and takes off on her own, because she just had to get batteries for the video camera. And she takes off driving the killer's car with the built-in GPS navigational/tracking device. And, lastly, while there's a touch of irony in how the killer gets his, it really comes off as anticlimactic.

The DVD comes with not half bad bonus features: interesting hubby & wife audio commentary by writer/director Robert Hall and actor/producer Bobbi Sue Luther; the in-depth "Postmortem: The Making Of" featurette (31 minutes); "Torture: The SFX of LAID TO REST" (7:36 minutes) - the special effects crew go into how they blended digital effects with old-school prosthetics and make-up; 4 mostly blah deleted scenes, with the first one being a hilarious must-see; bloopers (7:42); and the trailer.

The story itself isn't remarkable, the pacing tends to drag at times, and there are moments of camp and cheese. But, overall, LAID TO REST is a fair splatterfest, with good performances, brutal bloodletting, and several iconic shots of the menacing Chrome Skull. I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome Skull reappears somewhere down the line, looking to maim and butcher and film his "little piggies" for some sick sort of prosperity - although I'm pretty sure Robert Hall was effing around when he said the sequel will probably be called LAID TO REST 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.

What Laid to Rest lacks in terms of coherent story, it more than makes up for with inventive kills and ingenious practical gore effects. Bobbi Sue Luther stars as an amnesiac girl who wakes up in a coffin, only to find herself hunted down by a chrome-skull-faced killer with a video camera strapped to his shoulder. Soon enough, she finds herself taken in by a kindly couple (Kevin Gage, Lena Headey) and naturally, the killer isn't far behind. There are cameos and small roles featuring genre stalwarts like Richard Lynch, Johnathon Schaech, and Headey's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles co-star Thomas Dekker, but what really makes Laid to Rest worthwhile is its no-holds barred attitude and fantastic gore effects that combine to make for some inventive and gross kills. Anchor Bay's DVD features are also worthwhile, including an interesting commentary from writer/director Robert Hall and Bobbi Sue Luther, who also co-produced the film; and a blooper reel that is actually funny. All in all, for die-hard slasher fans that are sick of all the crummy PG-13 teen horror flicks and sadistic but not scary torture flicks, Laid to Rest should definitely be right up your alley.

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