Film Review - The Retaliators
Images courtesy of Better Noise Films.
If you like straightforward films, then The Retaliators definitely isn't for you. Working with many horror subgenres, this movie fails to create a cohesive narrative, changing its tone and story every 20 minutes. But, if you like nu-metal rock and are inclined towards brutal on-screen kills, you should grab some popcorn and a pop-top because this flick might just be up your alley.
Opening on a flash-forward without clueing the audience into the jump with subtitles or voice-over, ravaging humans attack and murder two girls on a road trip. After the opening titles, we meet a young girl named Sarah Bishop, portrayed by Katie Kelly, in a group therapy session, presumably due to family trauma. Her dad, known only as Bishop and played by Michael Lombardi, looks through the glass window at her. From these images, we assume that Sarah will be the protagonist and explore her character's past. However, the narrative shifts to Bishop, who gets pushed around by many people in life. When Bishop and his daughters are Christmas shopping, Brian O’Halloran, (famously in Clerks and Clerks 2) pushes Bishop and steals his Christmas tree. Though this is hard to watch, it fails to show meaningful character development or create empathy for Bishop’s character. To continue to add to the many meaningless story additions, Bishop is also (ironically) a Pastor, a gimmick used to insert the idea of religious and natural law into the film and to employ voice-overs that sound like they had been recorded into an iPhone. Sarah convinces her father to let her go to a party, under the condition that she fills up the car's tank. While getting petrol, Sarah notices a man in the trunk of someone else’s car. When the car’s owner sees her and the trouble she may cause, he chases and kills her. At the twenty-four-minute mark, we finally discover that Sarah isn’t the protagonist, which is one of the many plot points we must readjust to due to perspective shifts throughout the story.
This film is a great example of a movie made by people who love classic horror. From the title design, and the visual and narrative references to The Evil Dead and Friday The Thirteenth: Part 3, this movie attempts to revive the classics. The story also makes big nods to John Wick and other revenge flicks. The band members of Five Finger Death Punch, a nu-metal rock band, portray bikie gang members, whose characters only serve to be brutally murdered. It seems like the band, and other bands, only did this film to jump onto the trend of musicians making horror movies, following in the footsteps of Kid Cudi in X and the Foo Fighters with Studio 666. In featuring rock and roll bands, the soundtrack also sports a nu-metal theme which is good music but feels inappropriate for the movie. In one scene, Bishop mourns the death of his daughter to the song ‘Darkness Settles In’ by Five Finger Death Punch which sounds like music that could be in a sports montage. This highlights a larger problem with the film: its poor pacing. Scenes will shift from fun to brutal in seconds, and the colour grade changes at least five times throughout the film creating a queasy and uncomfortable atmosphere, and not in a fun schlocky horror way.
Although the filmmakers tried to make this flick deeper than it was, it still successfully asks the question, “can we keep our humanity even amidst horrific evil in the world?” But, with flashbacks within flashbacks, plot details that go nowhere, a tone that jumps from scene to scene, flawed direction, poor acting, and poorer dialogue, The Retaliators is a confusing caper that’s both mindless and high octane - making it a perfect future TV movie.
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The Retaliators screens nationally on September 14 and 16, and streams from October 21st. For tickets and more info, click here.