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Suddenly, every other horror movie coming out this year now looks better.

Thrusting audiences straight into the horror of isolation, Muck takes that GEICO commercial – the one spoofing the horror genre – and turns into a 90-minute feature. The problem is that the movie isn’t nearly as funny or as smart as the commercial. It does play – for about 60 seconds – as an homage to the slasher flicks of a by-gone era and it does so, thankfully, without CGI gore. It even has Kane Hodder as the main hatchet-wielding albino, Gnawesome Crutal. How meta-horror can you get? How about a competent script for starters?

The “film” opens with the audience joining a group of friends just as they emerge from the thick, murky darkness of the marshes tattered, bloody, and lucky to be alive.  They will soon find out, as the tag line reads, that the lucky ones are already dead. Albino killers are surrounding the house they have stumbled upon and will attack soon. But first, the women must undress, shower, and stand in front of bathroom mirrors modelling a wild assortment of bras. Also starring Lachlan Buchanan (Pretty Little Liars), Lauren Francesca, Leila Knight, Gia Skova, and Jaclyn Swedberg (Playboy Playmate of the Year 2012), Muck descends rather quickly into insipid acting and even less interesting dialogue.

Muck wants to desperately hold its own alongside Hatchet. Unfortunately, writer/director Steve Wolsh is no Adam Green. While Muck is unapologetic with its intentions to rob women of their bras, the intelligence at the helm of this production is in question. We start in the middle of a proposed trilogy of soon-to-be-released Muck films. Interestingly, we get no explanation of the how and why a group of murderous albino’s are after this group of annoying, half-naked teenagers. The film also ends unexpectedly. Both are narratively bold moves but you have to forgive too much silliness to actually get caught up in the action.

Hodder has ONE good kill, resulting in a scantily clad woman getting dragged up the stairs with a hatchet in her gut. The rest of the kills, while not bloodless, are quite lame and downright dull. Couple that with Wolsh’s inability to make the film appealing to real horror fans and not just horny teens wanting to gawk at tits and asses every 6 – 10 minutes and you see rather quickly that Muck misses the point in being a throwback. The 80s horror films had creative kills. They had fun characters. They had everything Muck robs us of.

Speaking of robbing, the creators behind this flick ran a successful Kickstarter.com campaign late last year to help fund the other two films in the trilogy. The campaign raised $266, 325 from backers. It’s a good thing they did this before the film was released because it’s hard to say if Wolsh is more interested in watching females undress or watching them killed. You could make an argument for each position after watching this Muck.

Regardless of the stance, Wolsh’s film is unbearably obtuse in its handling of women in the horror genre and, as a result, it damn near incoherent as edited together. In one scene, Swedberg goes to a bar’s restroom and inexplicably models underwear for 10 minutes and then rejoins her friends. In another scene, a woman showers, stops, turns on the radio, and then lathers her boobs and ass to a sultry country rock song. There is more to the horror genre than this, Wolsh. Scare the shit out of us, please. This is just mindless exploitation without the development of a real story.

Muck misses the point.

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[tab title="Film Details"]

MPAA Rating: Unrated
Runtime: 90 mins
Director: Steve Wolsh
Writer: Steve Wolsh
Cast: Jaclyn Swedberg, Kane Hodder, Lauren Francesca
Genre: Horror
Tagline: The lucky ones are already dead...
Memorable Movie Quote: "You could've told me that I was walking into a nightmare, Noah. I would've jerked-off first."
Distributor: Anchor Bay Films
Official Site: http://www.getthemuckout.com/
Release Date: March 13, 2015
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: March 17, 2015
Synopsis: After narrowly escaping an ancient burial ground, a group of friends find themselves trapped between two evils, forcing them to fight, die, or go back the way they came.

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

Blu-ray Details:

Available on Blu-ray - March 17, 2015
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: English SDH; Spanish
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Discs: 50GB Blu-ray Disc; Single disc (1 BD)
Region Encoding: A

Shot well and amazingly detailed, Anchor Bay’s 1080p release of Muck doesn’t disappoint. It was filmed on a RED camera so the image quality is crisp, excellent, and full of detail. This is important to note, as most of the film takes place at night. On lesser cameras, the image is grainy or too dark to see. Here, the picture shines in all of its HD glory. The overall image is tight and makes the disappointing movie easier to digest. Black levels are deep and balanced. The Dolby Digital 5.1 TrueHD soundtrack is also a heavyweight.

Supplements:

Commentary:

• No one has anything to say about this crap.

Special Features:

The Blu-ray edition mercilessly comes without a director’s commentary, deleted scenes or anything else to extend the experience.

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