Muck – C’mon, it’s not that bad!

Sometimes, I watch a film and really enjoy it.  Then, I come to review it and see on the website that everyone else totally despises it.  I’m guessing I must have seen something in ‘Muck’ that others didn’t.  

So, these days ‘slasher’ films are hardly the novelty they once were (I think they got ‘old’ somewhere in the late seventies and most are poor clones of either the ‘Texas Chainsaw’ films or of the ‘Halloween’ franchise. However, occasionally one comes along which stands out among the piles of machetes and ice hockey masks.  And this one did for me (although, judging by the ratings, I guess it stood out in the WRONG way for other people!).

To begin with, the story starts off half way through the story – I will explain.  Instead of the car-load of annoyingly good-looking American teenagers driving somewhere remote and getting picked off one by one.  Here, half of them have already fallen victim to some unseen evil force and they’re already in a fight for survival.  Then, when they do decide to take refuge in an abandoned holiday home in the middle of a swamp (okay, you may have to suspend your disbelief to believe that someone would actually have a holiday home in the middle of a deadly swamp, but we’ll just gloss over that for now!) whatever was after them hasn’t finished with them.  At least there is a pause in the action when they make a fair few self-knowing references which proves that whoever wrote this is well aware of the clichés attached with the genre and does their best to poke fun at them and subvert them.

However, I get the impression that these attempts to ‘subvert’ the slasher clichés may have led to Muck’s low ratings on many websites.  A lot of criticism levelled at the story is that it’s a ‘mess’ and ‘all over the place.’ I can see why people may think this as the story does tend to bounce here and there and give us more characters than the average film of its type.  Plus it introduces new characters at times when you probably feel that you’ve met the entire cast.  Then you have the nudity.  If you’re easily offended by the naked female anatomy then you definitely shouldn’t watch this.  The film-makers even went as far as to employ ‘professional’ ladies who would be less inhibited when it comes to displaying themselves.  Plus you have the gore, which is pretty good and steers away from CGI effects as much as it can.  My only real gripe was with the ending (and when I say ‘ending’ I mean literally the ending – ‘final shot’ so to speak – which I felt didn’t work, but you’ll see for yourselves if you agree.

Yes, Muck may be a little uneven here and there, but I felt that it knew what it was and never tried to be anything different.  It knows it’s cheesy and over-the-top and I’m sure they must have watched ‘Evil Dead’ a few times during the writing process, as the (eventual) lead may bears more than a little resemblance to our old hero ‘Ash.’

It’s no classic, but it was never intended to be.  It’s meant to be a cheeky, fun nod to the genre.  Expect everything to be turned up to eleven.  Apart from the reviews of course, but, in my opinion, it’s definitely worth more than a 2/10 (it’s current rating at the time of writing this review on a major film website).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that