Machete Joe (2010)

Very disappointing...

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Please don't spend money on this.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Summary is that this movie isn't worth watching. But the really bad thing is that it could have been good if they taken the same care throughout the whole movie. The camera-work was decent and showed that they cared enough to try. Others have said the acting was terrible, but there I disagree. I found the actors believable, it's just that their dialogue (1) didn't tell me anything to get interested in them so that they were all generic characters and (2) the script had the characters doing unbelievable things and didn't flesh out the story of Machete Joe at all. He's just sort of . . . there.If the script had been written so that the characters had something to say and were doing things that were believable it would've been interesting. As it is, it's not worth a rental.

Outside of the novelty of having blacks in predominant roles, this slice'n'dice opus offers nothing really new or surprising. The premise is formula stuff: A group of aspiring filmmakers find out the hard way that a local urban legend that they are making a movie about is real. Director Sasha Krane, working from a talky and generic script by Gordon Greene, not only relates the familiar story at a sluggish pace, but also crucially fails to generate any much needed tension or creepy atmosphere. Worse yet, the annoying characters spend the bulk of the screen time bickering and arguing with each other, thereby ensuring that they are decidedly less than appealing and sympathetic. Paul Campbell as the hideously disfigured titular killer just ain't that scary and the attempts to make him a pitiable tragic figure fall flat. Ernie Hudson as the amiable local sheriff and Art Evans as van driver Sammy are both wasted in minor nothing roles. While it's nice to see "Assault on Precinct 13" star Austin Stoker in a decent sized part, he's alas saddled with playing an obnoxiously pompous and arrogant jerk. The rest of the cast are passable at best. Fortunately, this movie does deliver on the gore, so it's not a total wash-out. That said, both the limp dissatisfying ending and Vincent Gillioz's standard hum'n'shiver score also leave something to be desired. However, the sharp cinematography by Christopher Wailings gives this picture a pleasing crisp look. A pretty blah and forgettable flick.

I saw this movie on Netflix Canada and very much enjoyed the stylish great opening scene and the movie-making-within-a-movie theme.As a fellow low-budget horror b-filmmaker, I enjoyed the scenes of a sleazy Caucasian filmmaker character bringing his bimbo-type girlfriend for a horror movie role, and witnessing the discussion of of his worries (to a fellow producer) of the white Mid-west USA audience not buying tickets to see a black person chopping up white folks...gold! The actors know how to act. Great Sets. Great music fx and filmic visual fx. I very much enjoyed the fact that the cast was ethnically diverse, as it's impossible to believe that all white casts exist in the real world. The art vs. commercialism battles were real smooth. Oh, and there is also a good, suspenseful gory horror movie there too...but I just wanted to make my point; as a fellow artist. Also, I enjoyed the fact that although this movie is shot very professional; that these aware (real-life) Canadian filmmakers also make fun of their amateur roots cinematography-wise with film some film shots (by the filmmaker characters' biographer w/ a mini-cam), to show we cinephiles that they (the real filmmakers) know what audience expectations are up against ( since b-movie usually look very amateur) & that they know how to make a great looking film (that looks 3 times the budget) & the problems actors and filmmakers have with each other....Oh, did I also mention this is a good horror film?... Machete Joe is one gruesome mutha-shut-yo-mouth!

I've seen several films in this genre. Most of them, with the exception of this well done work, are badly lighted. In effect, in other horror films, a viewer often gets bombarded with flashing lights and dark scenes where most of the actors cannot be seen well. This film, in my opinion, is well written, the actors are fine, and the thrills are well paced, and the lighting is excellent, sometimes, even beautiful. In closing, I comment on a previous review by someone called, 'TheBeardedWonder': This person indicated "... I don't want to spend more time than I have to here..." yet their piece was relatively lengthy, and "...nothing is good about it..." using universal quantifiers, like, "nothing is good". All this seems to me to be a bit disingenuous.