Review - M (2010)

Before I get into the review of M, I want to first take the opportunity to give my thanks to the Cole Brothers for keeping me well informed about their movie. How did they do this? They send me a press release along with production stills with the movie itself so it was easy for me to understand their film. With that said, I really enjoyed their horror film M because it was a horror but it was also sort of a drama. The film is about a young yuppie couple that get tied up and gagged in their basement when a deranged killer invades their home. While the police are hot on the trail and their friends from work begin to worry, the couple soon realizes that the killer has a hidden agenda and that it was all planned… from the beginning. Overall, I liked this film but I have 1 or 2 nitpicky things with it.

The first thing that I noticed right off the bat was the performances of Steven Twardokus (who plays Roy) and Sabrina Carmichael (who plays Roy’s wife Jessica). I thought they really played their roles well. The emotions felt real and whenever the masked killer took a hammer and nail to one of the characters, you felt it and you can see the pain through their performances. They made their characters likable and even after they find out why the killer is doing all this, you still feel for them. You feel sorry for them. Even the killer, as lumbering as he was, seemed to have a character somewhere inside of him much like Michael Meyers. You’ll notice that he breathes really heavy before and after he kills his victims.

Since I am really big on the technical aspect of films too, and even though this was an indie film, I looked at the way the camera moved and the way the set was lit and my general consensus of that was… WOW! For an indie film, the Cole Brothers really took the cinematography to a whole new level. Sure, the lighting was in all the right places but I think the main star of the tech side of things was the camera. I saw swooping shots, 360 movements around characters, very stylized panning and even an over-the-head shot that turned into a swooping shot. It doesn’t really add anything to the film but it certainly is nice to look at.

I also want to take a moment to comment on the brutality of the movie. Yes, this is a torture movie but it’s not anything like such torture films as Hostel or Saw… it’s a bit more down to Earth. The killer likes to drills screws into people’s legs, cutting his victims and nailing boards into their thighs. The film is quite bloody and what I enjoyed about it was that it’s raw torture. It isn’t elaborate or ‘out there,’ it’s just raw and painful torture. The type of torture that the every day Joe can inflict.

Once we realized the killer’s true motives for torturing these seemingly innocent couple, Roy begins to recap what really happened and for the sake of not being a dick, I won’t spoil anything. However, what I will say is that it seems as though this film has a small theme of childhood angst. I’m sure we can all connect, in some way or the other, to the film’s subplot and personally… I think that was a nice touch. It’s not original by far but it ends up in a different location then many other films don’t.

The only things I had a problem with was that they really could have done more with the cops that were tracking the killer. They were in the film every now and then but they had the potential of being great supporting characters. I also wish, and this probably just a personal grievance I have, that the film didn’t have to introduce the main characters through the act of sex. I understand it shows their relationship but I felt that it could have been later on or the next day.

However, despite these minor criticisms I really enjoyed this film. I fell asleep the first time I saw it because I was tired and I wanted to see where the film led. M is a wonderful horror film that really shows the capability that indie directors have. The Cole Brothers really took it to the next level and I hope to see more from them.

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Visit CRC Digital Entertainment's official website.