Oh brother...another day and another poorly made torture flick. Live Feed, though supposedly written before the success of Hostel, plays like a cheap, sleazy and cheesy rip-off. This is a fine example of gore for gore's sake, with absolutely no intelligence or substance to its flimsy plot.
In the story we've all heard before, five tourists are visiting a foreign country, this time in China. They proceed to be the usual culturally incompetent Americans and piss off the locals. One meathead accidentally spills beer on a powerful crime boss and gets them all kicked out of a bar. They soon end up at a porno theater/brothel and end up doing lines in the bathroom, cheating on their respective girlfriends/boyfriends and getting down 'n' dirty (of course they are all turned on by filthy, cum-splattered establishments!). What they don't know is that they are all locked into their respective rooms that are wired with a live feed so the crime boss can watch them...watch them get butchered by his lackeys, that is! Blood runs free as the kids are gruesomely tortured and killed...
If you are looking for any kind of sympathy for the characters, look elsewhere...character development is nonexistent here. The characters are there to get slaughtered, nothing else. I couldn't have cared any less for the annoying characters, who are practically begging to be killed. The "acting" (if you must call it that) didn't help my disdain for the characters. Let me just say...it was painful to watch. The delivery was stilted, cheesy and unnatural and, boy, did they all look awkward in front of the camera. The acting was laughable and more cringe-worthy than all the gore put together. In defense of the actors, they didn't have much to work with as the dialogue was bloody awful! Seriously, a 12-year old could have done a better job writing more believable dialogue.
Now, the only reason to watch this movie would be the gore...you're not looking for brilliant acting or poetic dialogue. You're a gorehound and all you want is the pain and the blood, dammit! This movie is relatively brutal, but since there is no emotional attachment to the characters, therefore no suspense or tension, this led to ambivalence towards the death scenes. I just didn't care. And while it's always cool to see a pole shoved down a throat and snakes slipped down it so when you cut the stomach open the snakes spill out, it's just not enough. The rest of the gore scenes are done for shock value (and really, they aren't all that shocking) and nothing else. Gore for gore's sake. Don't get me wrong, I like my gore, but in this movie it's just a letdown and a real bore, even if it is brutal.
Another thing overused in the movie is the nudity. I'm no prude, but the shots of a stripper gyrating on a pole were just pointless and boring. Same thing goes for the rest of the film...all the T & A was in no way titillating, but just cheap-looking. Boys, the girls weren't even that attractive, so don't get all hot and bothered. These misogynistic shots of women, which not only include the strippers but also the tourists in plight (the women are subjected to the worst torture, while the men get off with pretty easy deaths) give the horror genre a bad name.
I wouldn't recommend Live Feed to anyone. It is just another, lesser and more boring/pointless version of many (better) films that have come before it, which seeks to shock the viewer instead of entertaining them. Gorehounds, while you may enjoy the torture scenes, this the rest of the movie is just not worth it and is a complete waste of time.
Order it on Amazon
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