Call it "The best looking POS I've ever seen" or "Terrence Malick's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," Bereavement was an ill-starred review for DVDsnapshot. Blocked by a buggy computer, a buggy blu-ray disc, a death in the family, and other technical difficulties, I hope the review was judged to be worth the weight.
Bereavement
Official Synopsis:
In 1989, a 6-year-old boy is lured into
the vehicle of a stranger. The stranger is a serial killer with a
tendency for butchering teenage girls. In the basement of a rural
Pennsylvania slaughterhouse, he will teach the boy everything he
knows. Five years later, teen Allison (Alexandra Daddario of Hall
Pass and Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief)
comes to live with her uncle (Michael Biehn of The Terminator)
following her parents' death. In time she will discover the boy and
his madman mentor and they will all be plunged into an unimaginable
evil from which there may be no escape. Nolan Gerard Funk (Deadgirl),
Brett Rickaby (The Crazies), Valentina de Angelis (“Gossip Girl”)
and John Savage (The Deer Hunter) co-star in this graphic and
acclaimed shocker from writer/director Stevan Mena about family,
torment, and the nightmare absolution that is Bereavement.
Our Take:
There's an advantage in watching a
“prequel” when you haven't seen the movie that inspired it. There
may be things staged that retroactively pay off in that film that you
miss, but you get to judge it on it's own strengths. However, what do
you say about a film that's the story of a six year old being molded
into a serial killer?
Well, for starters, Bereavement is
coldly gorgeous. Beautifully filmed, with shots chillingly composed,
it oozes ominousness from beginning to end. That beginning follows a
character following children around in a truck, and eventually
snatching one to keep for his own and raise to be a killer. He picks
Martin, who can't feel pain, and quickly stops empathizing with
others.
Talk about training up a child...
