Crush the Skull – 2015

Crush the Skull is first and foremost a thriller I think. To some extent, I don’t consider a movie without supernatural parts a horror movie. That only goes so far though. Of course, a film about a deranged killer, as is the case in Crush the Skull, can qualify as a horror flick if it’s scary enough. Or, if the violence is over the top or something like that. But first and foremost it becomes a thriller in my world. But not entirely. It’s also a horror film in some aspects and there are comedic undertones in there. I wouldn’t say that it’s black comedy though, even if it to some extent could be called that. Everything goes south after all.

We get to follow a couple of thieves as they break into this house. Needless to say, it doesn’t go too well for them. To make a long story short they end up with nothing and one of them even gets caught by the police. He’s down on his luck too since he already has two strikes. But… He gets released and is now in debt to a loan shark and must start off his debt immediately. Said and done, they are now forced to agree to do a heist against this house. It’s a badly planned robbery. There’s absolutely nothing of value in there. It doesn’t make things better when they realize that they cannot get out of the house. To top that up, they encounter the owner of the house, a deranged serial killer.

The dialog

I don’t think it’s really a black comedy. there’s humor in Crush the Skull though, it is mainly in the dialog. Some of it is hilarious but the actors always keep a straight face. They tell bad jokes to each other and always seem to screw up the punchline and so on. Many of the characters are really foolish. you just wait for them to make a mistake and prove to the other just how irrational they are. I’m not saying that is a bad thing, that’s what keeps this movie going forward I think. It’s somewhat scary and the plot itself might be horrifying on a theoretical level. I mean, how would you react if you were stuck inside a house you couldn’t escape from? And if there was a deranged killer chasing you in there?

Apparently, the film is based, or spun-off, on earlier short films made by the director Viet Nguyen. It would be fun to see them to see where this full-length film was coming from. In the meantime, this was better than I thought it would be. And I really like the poster art. It’s that kind of thing you really can’t help but see and notice. It really stands out!