Junior (2002)

Must See Movie...

Best movie ever!

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

ENGINE TROUBLE is a very low budget Belgian serial killer thriller that plays out like WRONG TURN. The budget is so low that nothing happens for most of the running time, leaving the viewer stuck with a couple of uninteresting female characters whose journey goes awry when their car breaks down. Eventually they're chased by the usual psycho killer. The director might like De Palma but this is your typical indie, with diluted thrills and a real lack of expertise.

Unimaginative and flat characters and concept, terrible acting but not so much as to be good, no plot (but it's a slasher flick right, so oh well), but worst of all, one of the most terribly done killers in the history of horror films. I mean really, the hunchback of Notre Dame who sways side to side like a drunken monkey, and who occasionally does a flip for no other reason apparently that that he can. Plus he has a cheesy sickle that was intended to be cool but looks like some kid threw it together in an afternoon metal shop class. There are also the most ridiculous scenes where the villain taunts the victim... you know, those sorts of scenes where you have to ask "how did no one see him". And the acting... let's get back to the acting... accents that are all over the place, cheesy monologues, utter emotional/moral inconsistency, the list goes on. Still, will I say it is the worst movie ever? No. The first few minutes I thought it might be a decent 80s flick tribute, and in a way it still is. It has a bit of a campy retro feel. It has an okay setting and bad, but not the worst, effects (for the few there are). I would never recommend it, but I would buy it for $1... not more... just $1.

Perhaps I'm a little biased because I live in Belgium myself (and this movie was entirely financed here) but I honestly don't think that "Engine Trouble" is half as awful as all my fellow commentators claim it is. Sure, the story is something you've already seen a thousand times before and, yes, the dialogues are so poorly written they make your ears ache, but then still there are really decent elements to enjoy, like a fair amount of tension and a couple of raw shock effects. Especially the first hour is surprisingly entertaining as the screenplay blends simple suspense with some cheerful horror-clichés. Two beautiful (lesbian?) girls go on a road trip and their rusty car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. One girl mysteriously disappears when she leaves to get help and the other finds herself stalked by a horribly deformed killer. The second half of the film is overlong and mainly boring, also because the plot becomes too déjà-vu and repetitive. It goes without saying that the 'monster' is only an underdeveloped being and it are, in fact, his guardians who are the real maniacs. The low-budget production aspects are fairly well camouflaged by using simple tricks, like deserted filming locations, monotonous camera-work and vaguely shot scenery. The make-up on the killer is very cool, though, and he carries around a gleaming sharp sickle! "Engine Trouble" isn't as gross as it looks, especially not since producer James Desert is mostly known for his downright sick movies like "Rabid Grannies" and "Lucker – the Necrophagous". Gorehounds will mostly likely cheer for the nauseating decapitation sequence, though! The acting performances are overall very bad, but that's hardly an obstacle anymore if you're used to seeing trash-horror flicks like this. "Engine Trouble" is fun to watch and definitely worth a rental whenever you feel like seeing a simplistic slasher.

JUNIOR, aka ENGINE TROUBLE, is one bad movie. It looks like members of a film crew pulled their tiny resources together and made this micro movie during a break of the other bigger budgeted film and shot this one in a few days. There's no story and there's almost no semblance of any pre-production: everything was shot in one area and the cast is populated by 5 or 6 actors, all of whom are awful and show very little experience in acting or anything else.A lot of people say that horror is better imagined than showed. Well, they haven't seen the moment when the unseen killer is on top of the roof of the car and torments the woman inside. In this case, even though the "filmmakers" might say they wanted to create horror in people's mind with this tedious scene, I 'm more inclined to believe that they shot it this way because it was cheap. It's a fine line between astute direction and penny-pinching film-making.The really funny thing about it is that it's an exploitation film wannabe that doesn't really exploit anything.But as bad as JUNIOR is, and it is bad, I've seen much worse than this. Like SHREDDER.