Severed (2002)

A Masterpiece!

The acting in this movie is really good.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

While I don't know how many movies I've seen over the course of my life, I DO know that I have never seen a movie as bad as this. There are no redeeming qualities to be found here, not even the "so bad it's funny" charm that some movies have. So what's this atrocity all about? There's a guy going around decapitating people and from what I remember from the barely audible dialogue, he's been doing this for a few years. Apparently, the police didn't seem all too concerned because only recently, they decide to get some help from a bounty hunter named Blake, who might just be the most unlikable character in anything I've ever seen. Blake gets help from a woman who specializes in voodoo and things just go from there. I believe I read on here from another reviewer that this looks like something from a high school video production class. Now, I'm not a teacher but had it actually been a high school project, I would give it a D Minus, maybe a D and make every student involved revise it, which someone should've made the director do.The lighting, if you can call it that, is awful. As I mentioned above, the dialogue is barely audible. The acting is practically non existent and no one has an ounce of charisma. The effects and camera work are by far the worst offense and I want to provide one scene in particular as an example. I don't know if that counts as a spoiler but I'm going to give a spoiler warning just in case. After meeting with the Voodoo lady, Blake heads home. He sits down to read a magazine and suddenly, the camera cuts to the image of a very fake severed head on top of his TV. The camera then "zooms" in to Blake's very fake startled expression three times. The head looks like a basic styrofoam head sloppily painted and covered with a cheap wig and dollar store fake blood. The "zooming" looks like the editor(s) took a screenshot of Blake's startled face and messed around with it to give the illusion of zooming in.To wrap things up, just avoid this movie and watch something else like Battlefield Earth or House of the Dead. Hell, even the old Sci Fi Channel Original Movies are better. Sure they're awful but at least you'll be able to have some good laughs with a group of friends. Watching this with a group of friends will make them never want to speak to you again.

0.5/10. This movie has absolutely nothing good about it. The acting is among the worst I have ever seen, what is really amazing is that EVERYONE is awful, not just a few here and there, everyone. The direction is a joke, the low budget is hopelessly evident, the score is awful, I wouldn't say the movie was edited, brutally chopped would be a more appropriate phrase. It combines serial killings, voodoo and tarot cards. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. It is not scary at all, the special effects are hopelessly lame. laughably bad throughout. The writing was appallingly bad. The cinematography is real cheap looking, and very grainy sometimes, and the camera-work is dreadful. Again, what really does the movie in is how badly all the actors are. Cheesy.

If you wish to produce your own feature, please pause a moment to take in the intoxicating brilliance of 'Severed'. I am glad I own a copy of this DVD for my own personal collection, so I may review it at my leisure when I feel particularly low in my fine-culture fuel tank.As a film about Coup de Etat attempts in Eastern Europe, I find 'Severed' to be both insightful and magically realistic. Certainly it's producers have in depth knowledge of behind-the-scenes political machinations and bring them to bear metaphorically in the form of a deranged mass decapitator loose in society. It is refreshing to see such high-brow culturally hedgmonic ideas come to bear in low-budget fare. As a result I carry my copy of 'Severed' with me while lecturing in the former Eastern Bloc "Schools Du Cinema" and have shown excerpts on my Austrian talk show "Cinemachten es Machinen du Changen Regimen!!!"The picture bears witness to the director's mistrust of the instability often caused by the political vaccum left following a Coup. As an uber-marxist multicultural talisman of the zeitgeist present in collective schemas, 'Severed' performs admirably supplanting the role of neo-camp metadata with a post-modern serial killer/police procedural Brechtian signpost with Plathian undertones. Of course, none of this is particularly profound as it should be obvious to the most casual of viewers.To be fair, the film has it's downpoints. The acting is a notch below that of your low-budget local cable commercial, and to say the film is directed as unevenly as a 3-legged table is insulting to 3-legged tables everywhere. However you can not completely fault a film as nakedly ambitious and political as this.As such, I highly recommend 'Severed' between sips of triple-chai-mocha-goat's milk-latte and as a break from a steady diet of Nietzche. Severed from my copy of 'Severed'? Ye Gods, don't let this come to pass!!

To be brutally honest... I LOVED watching Severed. That's why Igave it a 1/10 stars because of its starkly unimaginativestory/filming/acting/everything. This film was a RIOT to watch. Ifyou enjoy watching bad films in order to poke fun at them, you willreally get a kick out of Severed.The story really doesn't matter, it involves some guy who's baldand has a sword and goes around beheading random people. But he has a supernatural twist... nobody ever sees him do it. Even when, in one very memorable scene, he walks into ajampacked night club and whacks off some girl's noodle andnobody sees it. Severed doesn't merely look like it was filmed on video- it WASfilmed on someone's home camcorder. The filmmakers hadknowledge of lighting (very thin knowledge) and compositionactually holds together in some scenes. But mostly you can't hearthe actors... you can't understand what they're doing, and you laughwhen the next vicitm gets his pumpkin detatched from his body.Go and rent this movie. Support films like this- they are a hoot anda hollar!