Terror Transmission

Comedy horror seems to be making a wee bit of a comeback these days. From the fun (Slither) to the stupid (Hatchet) to the truly inspired (Otis), it’s certainly a far cry from the sub-genre’s earliest (intentional) attempt, Student Bodies, which could be considered the retarded grandfather of the comedy/horror experiment — the one you hide from the neighbors in total embarassment. But sometimes, the occasional moments of genre adoption result in a nicely unexpected hybrid. Thankfully, Botched is one of those.

Botched starts out as a heist movie — more specifically, we begin with a diamond heist gone horribly wrong. At the head of this failure is Ritchie Donovan (Stephen Dorff), a man trying to free himself from a debt with a rather unscrupulous organized crime figure. To make amends, Donovan is more or less forced to take on another task: to recover an antique cross from a couple of rather demented individuals residing on the otherwise unused 13th floor of a skyscraper in the heart of Moscow. Assigned to be his helpers are, in short, a moron and a loose cannon, which is where the laughs truly begin.

It’s fair to say that this heist also goes awry, and the criminal trio end up having to take hostages from a packed elevator. What they learn about each other and the assumed police officer on the other end of the security walkie-talkie throws the plot of the film into full gear.

So many things are right about this movie. The camerawork at times harkens back to Raimi-esque, Evil Dead, manic-paced stalkercam. (And wasn’t that a mouthful!) Each person on the 13th floor is definitely an example of character acting at its funniest. Dialogue follows suit with some great bits amidst the very gory carnage. I can still hear Boris the security guard endlessly chanting in his hilariously overdone Russian accent, “I am alpha male, I am alpha male, I am alpha male.”

The standout character (without ruining too much of the plot here) has to be the Ivan the Terrible wannabe. He seems like something out of a wacked out Coen Brothers movie (and I’m definitely thinking about Tex Cobb’s “road warrior” type character in Raising Arizona here), but in complete berzerker mode. And what a sense of humor this bloodlusting combatant has. Wait until you see his disco dance floor. No, really.

This looks to be a directorial debut from Kit Ryan, with a lot of unknown actors aside from Dorff. It has an indie feel to it, but certainly not amateurish. There are some reviewers who completely trashed this film, obviously lacking a needed black sense of humor — which, of course, I do not lack. Definitely a strong rental suggestion, at the very least.