Experiment In Torture (2007) Movie Review

Released straight to video, Experiment in Torture is painfully predictable and clearly low budget. A good description of this film is ‘the poor man’s Hostel,’ although the plot and script aren’t as sensible. Supposedly, a serial killer murders women and turns their bodies into his canvas for art, but unless you read the synopsis, you wouldn’t ever know. Since there are so many women with the same basic, shallow character (hot, dumb, exotic dancer), it is hard to distinguish who is who. So, the viewer stops caring about the characters or what happens to them fairly early on in the feature.

The poor choices made in cinematography, dialogue and acting lead to a confusing and unrevealing excuse for nudity and crude gore. The audio is poorly balanced, conversations are faint, and the screaming is earsplitting, the camera is shaky, and the acting is immensely horrific. The special effects and makeup are laughable, and most of the scenes seem like they would come from the “deleted scenes” index of a larger budget movie.

Experiment in Torture is filled with nonsensically, strangely written lines that seem ad-libbed at times. At one point, while using the toilet, one of the strippers talks to her private parts as if she is talking to a baby. Other strippers repeat their lines several times, changing the words and grammar to sound like a street prostitute high on PCP, and flailing around as if they didn’t know how to walk. Rarely does anything have a significant consequence to the plot, but there are some memorable lines. One such is, “You’re just as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside!”, but the winning line has to be “Lick my face and make me think that you like it!”.

There is just no defense for the acting in this one; this film is painful to watch, and certainly embarrassing if it were found on any actors’ reel. The editing perpetuates the cheesy lines and horrendous acting with long cuts and faded transitions, and the score undermines any drama or decent acting that is miraculously dropped into this movie.

After watching the movie through the credits, another reason for the cheapened feeling received from this movie, aside from ripping off Hostile, is that the song Experiment in Torture, by Zoomer, which plays through the credits, is a completely mundane and blasé song written around the movie about being creative when killing someone.

After sitting through 80 minutes of blow-torches, drills, tazers and maggots being used in appalling ways against the human body, what you’ll really want to do is use a blow torch on yourself. The only experiment in torture during this film is sitting down and watching it.