John (Michael Lombardi) is a mild mannered pastor, and a widower raising his two daughters Sarah (Katie Kelly) and Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) on his own - and not doing too bad a job for sure. Then though, Sarah through no fault of her own witnesses a gangland crime, and is ultimately killed by the perpetrator, Ram (Joseph Gatt), who's hell-bent not to leave any witnesses behind. The grief is unbearable for the pastor, but fortunately he finds a sympathetic man in Sawyer (Marc Menchaca), the cop handling the case, who knows exactly what John's going through after having lost his own wife (Corrie Graham) to a serial rapist (Jacoby Shaddix) ten years ago. However that's a good thing only until Sawyer tells John he has captured Ram - and hidden him away in a remote location so John can have his revenge. John is mightily tempted, so much so that he already chooses a weapon with Ram sitting opposite him all tied up - but ultimately can't go through with it. Now this then puts Sawyer in a pretty awkward position, because he knows of course what he's doing is against the law and John might snitch on him if he lets him go. What's worse, Ram isn't the first perp he has snatched off the streets and locked into his basement for some victim's relatives to have their revenge on, he's got a full cage of them, all brutally disfigured but alive, if regressed to a primal state and full of rage. Bad comes to worse though when Ram's gang arrives at Sawyers hide-out to free Ram, and John shows enough compassion to free Sawyer's captives - and a resulting bloodbath is of course unavoidable ...

Now the finale of this movie is ultra-violent and should leave every gore fan super satisfied, as it's not only unrelenting but also shows inventiveness, and is quick-paced, properly explicit and very bloody. But it would be wrong to reduce the film just to its finale, as the preceding story actually has quite some depth to it, presents the viewer with an interesting moral dilemma, and doesn't offer any easy answers. And well-drawn characters played by a solid cast don't hurt one bit to make this a genre piece well worth a watch.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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