- Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
- Writers: Scott Milam, Scott Milam
- Stars: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Shawn Ashmore
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 52 Minutes
- Link:
Synopsis
A woman goes into a hospital and steals a baby. The security guard follows her into the basement where someone else kills him.
A couple at a small party are talking about getting a better house and having a baby as the weather talks about a tornado warning coming to the area. Meanwhile, some robbers are driving down the road, but one of them has been shot. The robbers go in the house, but they’ve got the wrong house; it’s the house with the party in the basement. The couple moved in two months ago, since their mother lost the house in a foreclosure. The robbers didn’t know it.
Before long, the robbers have everyone in the basement except for George, who is a doctor. There’s an inordinate amount of screaming while loud music plays in the background. The robbers’ mother shows up to take charge. She’s not happy to be there. She does, however, want the money that her boys have been sending to the house.
Beth and Danny, who bought the house, don’t know anything, so the boys break Danny’s hand. Melissa runs out, but she gets shot in the back. They take everyone’s ATM card and PIN numbers. Ike and Beth head off to cash in at the ATMs, while Momma takes charge. She’s calm, clear-headed, and very ruthless.
The prisoners in the basement are divided between those who want to counterattack and those who want to do what they are told. It comes obvious that regardless of how this all works out, none of them are going to be friends in the morning.
Johnny, the robber who got shot cries that he’s a virgin, so they grab one of the women from downstairs to help him with that problem. Momma’s a bit too hands-on with this procedure, so it doesn’t go well.
Meanwhile Ike and Beth have their adventures, and they’re pulled over by a cop who explains that the tornado is about to hit. That’s not how tornados work, but, OK. They end up shooting the cop and then running him over. At this point in the film we had a bathroom break, and the first words out of my mouth were, “Oh, my God, it’s got a half hour to go!”
Then things start getting… violent. One by one, people start dying in rapid succession; rapid, about an hour after they should have died. Then, Momma finds out that there are two mothers in the house…
Commentary
From the way this was marketed, and even after the opening scene, I was honestly expecting a baby-snatching film: something like “The Babysitter” or “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” not a home invasion/killer redneck film. It’s nothing at all what I expected.
This is what a dysfunctional family really looks like. Somehow, this much dysfunction isn’t funny at all. It’s definitely tense, as they’re all very unpredictable, but there’s nearly zero humor here, which is a factor that most horror films use to balance the bad stuff. This is just unpleasant from start to finish.
I did, however, learn how to torture someone with boiling water to the ears, so there’s that new skill. You never know when something like that is going to come in useful. The scene where they set a girl on fire was enlightening too, but probably not in a useful way.
Overall, not entertaining, too long, bleak, and non-fun throughout.