HughBennie-777

Funny how these movies (or are they movies? They deserve a new name like "smurms") get budgeted, produced, then a minor theatrical release or straight to streaming or YouTube sentence follows. There, they enjoy a blizzard of paid promotion, and what follows is an avalanche of bogus, positive 1 and 2 sentences of praise. These comments qualify as likes or hits? Whatever. They're all lies. What's proven is that the glory days of drive-ins and grindhouses were valid for making or breaking B movies. At least the comments here sound honest (and necessarily brutal) in judging just how bad this slopfest of a movie is. Please, no more smurms.

Hopelessly brain-dead, silly thriller can't summon the intense atmosphere of fear it so badly wants to rub your face in. Righteous private dick Nicolas Cage goes after cartoonish snuff-pornographers from NYC to L. A. The soundtrack is either booming with "Batman" movie orchestrations or endless, weird Middle Eastern tracks. Cage "enters a subterranean world of Evil" but the movie's heavies, especially Peter Stormare, are so goofy, when Cage solves the case and inflicts his fair share of violence on them, it's hard to believe he (and the audience) are supposed to be shattered by the experience. The occasional graphic moments have little impact, and it's almost like watching Cage bust a ring of Scooby Doo villains. Most of the movie's undoing is how tame it's sexual- depravity-for-sale appears compared to the modern day Gomorrah that is the internet. Catherine Keener's talents are wasted here as the long-suffering wife character who spends all her scenes indoors and attached to a baby. The finale is as anemic as a bad Three Stooges gag.