This Geek in Netflix: BreadCrumbs

Some weeks it feels like I just can’t win the horror movie lottery, no matter how many tickets I purchase.  Not only did I buy the ticket this week, I also managed to fall asleep when they were calling the winning numbers—not that my numbers were the lucky ones.

Okay, this metaphor is going on far too long.  So, if you didn’t get it: I watched another bad horror movie and it bored me to tears.  ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!  Fuck, stop forcing my inner literary student off the symbolic road.

In 2011 (last year, for those of you who aren’t keeping track… of time!!), Industrial Motion Pictures released the vaguely Hansel und Gretel-themed film, BreadCrumbs.  No, that “und” is not a typo.  Go read a book or something.

If you don’t remember, Hansel und Gretel was a Grimm Brothers story featuring—you guessed it—two children named Hansel and Gretel who, through all the variations of the tale, basically wound up being left in the woods by some adult (who was occasionally related to them) and one of the kids, while being taken to his/her leafy fate, left a trail of bread crumbs behind them.  Unfortunately, the bread crumbs were eaten by birds, the kids found some sort of witchy dwelling (typically a house made of candy), and then were captured by a witch who wanted to do horrible things to them.

This has next to nothing to do with this movie other than some references that briefly pay homage to the classic tale.  So why did I recount this highly memetic tale that you probably already knew?  Frustration.  It’s this amazingly classic tale with all these wonderful tropes to work with and the finished product of BreadCrumbs falls terribly short of expectations.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

BreadCrumbs tells the story of Angie (Marianne Hagan), a MILFy porn star in every sense of the word—save that she has no actual offspring.  Which means that, basically, she’s an older performer who now gets contracted to do MILF-themed and cougar-themed porn.  (Who knows too much about porn?  This chick.)

Angie and her co-workers have decided to rent a cabin in the woods (no relation to the movie Cabin in the Woods) and film an adult movie (aka: porn).  So we have the creepy camera guy (Jim Barnes), the doubtfully straight make-up artist (Shira Weitz), the annoying director (Mike Nichols – also this film’s director), the producer (Darbi Worley), and four other performers (Zoe Sloane, Alana Curry, Douglas Nyback, and Steve Carey).

Unfortunately, even with this fairly visually accurate crew, the script failed to provide any sense of realism of a porn set to those of us who have been on them.  More on that later.

While in the woods, the group comes across two “kids”—Patti and Henry—who seem to be rather insane and out of place.  After handling them oddly, the kids are dismissed from thought and it’s down to partying and filming.  However, before they can really get down to business (*rimshot*), things begin to go awry and one of the performers ends up being really well hung.

By the neck, people!  By the neck!!

Was it the kids?  Was it the wielder of what sounds to be some sort of electric trimmer in the distance?  Don’t worry—Scooby and the gang will find out!

When this movie wasn’t boring me to pieces, I was either busy yelling at the screen about basic realism (on so many levels, so many levels—what porn star shrieks and covers her chest when she sees someone watching her film a scene??) or moping that a movie that had the beginnings of a solid concept behind it failed so miserably script-wise to deliver.

The casting of the children did not help either—the dialogue and interpersonal interactions showed a clear relationship between adults and what should have been nine-year-olds, but the people who were cast were in their late teens which caused incredibly heavy dissonance.

Recommendation?  Avoid.  I could see some of the actors and, yes, even the director, doing some good things—but this isn’t one of them.  Between the miscasting of the “children” and the thoroughly unresearched script, this film was sadly doomed to failure.

But if you want to experience this for yourself you can, as always, find it on Netflix Instant.