Cornered! (2009)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Memorable, crazy movie

Boring

Blistering performances.

Five people play poker after hours in the upstairs of a liquor store, only to be picked off one by one by a serial killer. Much of the first half is centred around this game, frankly very boring. The acting isn't great, especially Duval as the heroin addict going cold turkey. The temptation to hit the FFWD button was great. Once the killing starts there is an attempt, with some success, to substitute gore for tension. Many slasher fans will feel short changed however, with only one killing near the end producing the gory goods. I guess making a film in pretty much a single location takes skill, so credit to them for trying. Could've been better, I'd pretty much lost interest after the first half.

Being a hardened, jaded horror buff this reviewer was tired of seeing a bunch of clichéd, attractive teens with the personality of a thrift store being killed over and over by the same kind of stalker. Along came Cornered! and I must say that I'm glad that I didn't listen to all the negative feedback on this site.A group of real people are trapped in a liquor store after a killer breaks in and begins stalking them. This killer has an odd penchant for murdering convenience store clerks and the like before stealing the security footage and watching his own handy work.The pace is what scared a lot of people off and it does tend to be a little slower than one would hope for. But it's just a minor complaint as the rest of the cast performs quite well, the villain is interesting, and it held my attention for eighty-two minutes. And wasn't it nice to see Steve Guttenberg again?

Low-budget horror movies can be surprisingly good (a lot of classics are in fact low-budget films) or just extremely bad. "Cornered" isn't awfully bad, but it is certainly below average. It starts off OK, with opening credits that let you believe this is a serial-killer film like "Se7en" or "Resurrection". But soon you realize this is a very average by-the-numbers 'slasher' with a shoe-string budget. There are only 7 actors and 1 location. The slow story takes place in a grocery\liquor store where the owner and some friends play poker while there is killer in the shop. One by one they check it out and never come back. The story reminds you a little of the classic slasher "Intruder" by Scott Spiegel. But "Intruder" was creepy and claustrophobic. "Intruder" had amazing special effects (KNB group) and brutal killings. It also had a surprising ending. "Cornered" fails on all counts. The story gets boring and it really stretches to fill the 82 minutes of running time. There was no money for real special effects or gore. The killings are disappointing. Even the 'highlight' kill, where one of them is hanging upside down and is gutted with an circle saw, is shown in a very cheap way to hide the fact that there was no real special-effects team present during the shooting. To conclude with the 'surprise' ending: yeah, right; like we didn't see that one coming ! (well, there were not much choices to begin with). First credited is Steve Guttenberg (Mahoney from the "Police Academy" films) but his role is kind of minimum. "Cornered" is not a very good movie. It really shows on screen that this is a very low-budget picture. It also never gets interesting and the motives of the killer are not really explained here. If you haven't seen "Intruder" (one of the best slashers ever made) than you can better check that one out and forget about this one.

I sat down to watch this movie with no particular hopes, a horror movie with Steve Gutenberg?Well, the movie actually turned out to be quite alright, not overly scary, but it had its moments of thrills and suspense.The characters in the movie were particularly colorful and hilarious. Lots of different addictions going on there. A junkie going cold turkey and having a phobia of bugs, a sexphone operator addicted to ice cream, a liquor store owner addicted to alcohol, a guy addicted to donuts, and a woman smoking way too many cigarettes. All of these quirky characters came together in a good wholesome story. The dialogue was good and funny.The concept of being locked inside a liquor store with a killer prowling you was something new. Never seen that scenario being used before.Sadly this is one of those movies that are very predictable. You will figure out the plot and the ending well ahead of time. But the movie is still worth watching, because you want to see what happens to the quirky characters.I found the movie to be alright. Not a movie you will watch a second time though. And despite it being a horror movie, it doesn't deliver any major frights.