Year Re-Released: 2005 (uncut)
Axe supposedly takes place in a secluded and isolated farm, where a psychotic girl named Lisa cares for her paralysed grandfather. This isn’t quite true. The first half of the film basically follows three criminals doing some stuff. I’m really not sure what it is they are doing. At first they kill a couple of guys for some reason, and then they go to a convenience store and throw tomatoes at the clerk, then play a bit of William Tell with her.
When it gets to the 25 minute mark we finally arrive at the secluded house. But it’s only after some faffing around that the criminals meet Lisa. They decide to stay low here, and Lisa doesn’t put up much resistance.
It’s a while after this that stuff actually starts happening. After 40 minutes of nothingness we have attempted rape, which causes Lisa to murder the criminal. With a straight-edge razor. I thought this film was about an axe?
Well, it does turn out there is a murder committed with an axe. One. That’s it. What a jip!
But I’ve spent far too much time looking at the plot. In fact, I think I’ve spent more time looking at it than the film does because this film is boring as hell. It takes 40 minutes for something to happen and that isn’t exciting. There’s no tension and no excitement.
None of the characters are likeable. Lisa is just bland, two of the criminals are basic criminals and the other is pathetic and wimpy. There’s not a single moment spent on character development. We never get to know these characters or why they are doing the things they do. This is especially true for Lisa, whose psychosis is never explained. Maybe if the film spent more time on its characters rather than doing sod all we might have something to care about!
With all this said, though, the film is hilariously bad. The editing is terrible. At one point blood is meant to appear on a mirror, so they put a few frames of this in the middle of Lisa looking at the mirror. The way the camera shifts is so obvious it’s pitiful. In addition to this we have terrible acting from all present. Horrific scenes just come across as humorous.
I think maybe this film is a Video Nasty for one of two reasons, one more plausible than the other. I doubt it was due to the “rape” scenes, which are so badly shot that it doesn’t look like rape. No, I think it was more likely to be due to the title. Axe just sounds like it has an ungodly amount of violence. But it doesn’t.
Surprisingly for a film that is 68 minutes long it feels far too long. And when we consider that if we remove the start and end credits the film is more like 62 minutes long then that’s even more surprising. 62 minutes of rubbish.
Final Verdict: 0/10
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