Reversal (6.5 out of 10) – Directed by Jose Manuel Cravioto; Written by Rock Shaink Jr. and Keith Kjornes; Starring Tina Ivlev and Richard Tyson; Not Rated; 86 minutes.
Most horror movies end when our hero or heroine finally overcomes their captor and runs screaming from the house, cabin in the woods or cellar in a desperate attempt to find safety. Not so with “Reversal” which turns the trope we are familiar with on its head and delivers a fun, if not exactly good, revenge film that will almost leave the audience satisfied.
Eve (Tina Ivlev) has been kidnapped and held hostage, chained to a bed, in a basement for months. Her kidnapper, Phil (Richard Tyson), visits to feed his hostage when Eve attacks and knocks him unconscious with a brick she has pried from the wall. She quickly rifles through his pockets, snatches the keys to her chains, ties him up and races outside to freedom. Unable to get Phil’s van started, she returns to the house to look for car keys only to discover the pictures of many other girls he has kidnapped and hidden in houses around the city. Determined not to leave them to die, Eve makes a bargain with the devil by keeping Phil alive in exchange for his showing her where the other girls are located. Little does Eve realize that her actions are playing perfectly into Phil’s plans, and that she has stumbled upon something more evil than just the work of a deranged kidnapper.
“Reversal” has the distinction of joining a list of movies that really aren’t that good but still end up being a ton of fun. It’s hardly bad, but there is nothing here that people haven’t seen before. In fact, it has a lot in common with the 2005 movie “Hard Candy” so long as you take away all the psycho-sexual tension and mental horror and replace it with blood, guts and a smattering of torture-porn. Even though it is derivative of that and many other films (there were a lot of “Kill Bill” moments thrown in), I still had a complete blast with it.
Perhaps it was just the fact that Richard Tyson plays Phil as such a despicable and groveling little bastard that it makes it all the more satisfying to watch Eve torture him, or maybe I just enjoy watching the victim turn the tides on their aggressor and give them what they really deserve. Whatever it was, I enjoyed it immensely and any horror fan will too.
There are a couple of issues that pop up, namely the recurring and unnecessary use of home video to show some kind of backstory to get us interested in the characters. Look, the fans of this kind of horror don’t care about the history of the characters; they want to see people die in grotesque and horrible ways. Thank you very much for providing some incredibly nasty deaths, but there is no reason to immediately flashback to a scene at the beach no one is interested in. If I had to guess, the whole point was to pad the movie’s running time and get it closer to the 90 minutes mark. Hopefully next time, the director will realize that the length of a movie is not directly proportional to its quality and leave out the useless filler.
Also, there is no final payoff for the audience as far as a showdown between Eve and Phil. It’s definitely alluded to in the last shot of the movie, but never being able to see Eve truly go after him is a shame because that’s what I waited an hour and a half for. It’s like if the Tarantino movie “DeathProof” ended and didn’t have the mid-credits scene of the women beating the ever living shit out of Kurt Russell. That little bit of catharsis is needed and sadly lacking from “Reversal.”
There’s nothing new here, much of the acting and cinematography isn’t even that good, and the story is predictable, but it’s still a helluva ride that will definitely find scores of fans when it’s eventually released. “Reversal” is a bloody, disgusting and chilling revenge romp that never lets up or gives the audience much time to breathe, and that is exactly what it was trying to do.