Carnage Park (2016)

Carnage Park (2016) The director, Mickey Keating, seems to know nothing but the world of horror. He can’t be said to be a very varied director who takes risks. He remains well and truly in his comfort zone, which I’ll describe as ‘shocking just to shock’!

An American crime thriller that becomes a game of survival. Keating described Carnage Park as a nod to the films of Sam Peckinpah and Peter Watkins made in the 1970s, and he built the film around this concept. Given that the story is set in the 70s, you can tell that the director is a fan of the genre films of that era, which in itself doesn’t bother me, because it’s a great period of cinema, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a success, and unfortunately that’s not the case here.

The violence and sadism are a bit like Hills Have Eyes. Its climatic heat and locations can also easily be compared. A film that has a yellow colour, given that a golden filter has been used to film and intensify the desert.

It’s original, even if we’ve already seen this in 2000 with Traffic, for example, where each third of the film had a different colour. So… not only does this film have an ugly colour, but it’s cruelly lacking in originality, just like its dialogue. There isn’t a single incredible sentence that stands out from the rest, except maybe the two or three sentences in the intro… which don’t really serve any purpose! In general, when I watch a film,

I’m always amazed to see that at some point there’s always something to do with my own life. But here, there’s not much to go on.

There are all these clichés that really need to be changed over time. There’s always the cop who turns up and makes you happy, but misses the mark. There are the other survivors who show that the main victim isn’t alone, but who often turn out to be useless or at the end of their tether. There are those moments when one character (or several) finds a small house, goes inside, finds some clues, but gets caught out. In short!

When I embarked on this film, I was hoping to rediscover the pleasure of films such as Germany’s Prey/Comme des Proies (2021), Sweden’s Red Dot (2021) and the UK’s Calibre (2018). But I was a long way off, unfortunately. Admittedly, I appreciate films that don’t dwell on torture and extreme violence that’s hard to watch. But Carnage Park is an extremely empty experience.

The film is like a train running out of track. And we’re always led to believe that these films are based on real events, when we know full well that they’re not. There are certainly these kinds of atrocious and despicable events taking place, that’s for sure, unfortunately. But it’s not like watching a documentary. We watch these kinds of films simply for the sheer sadistic pleasure of voyeurism. Ashley Bell is an American actress, born in 1986 in New York, known for her role as Nell Sweetzer in the films The Last Exorcism and The Last Exorcism Part II… which are both very bad! Not great for a big career… although her performance did earn her a nomination at the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards for Best Supporting Actress. Hard to understand! Especially as here I really get the impression that she’s overacting. I didn’t find her incredible, unlike a lot of other actresses in this kind of film, I had some nice moments, but also got quite bored.There are some very dark scenes in the mine where you can’t really see what’s going on. What’s more, there are plenty of cuts, as if the film was trying to show off to hide its low budget.

Carnage Park is not at all an essential film, either to see or to own. The title says it all: It’s carnage… in a park! It quickly becomes ponderous after 45 minutes. You start to get impatient with the lack of new dramatic elements to kick-start the plot. The first half-hour holds up well and is the best part of the film, even if Carnage Park shows its limitations, then it turns into a stalker between prey and a crazed sniper. Aside from this lack of originality, it’s the film’s direction that suffers from its lack of tension. What’s more, some of the camera effects aren’t very effective, even though the director wanted to add intensity to certain scenes.Another very short film (under 1 hour 20 minutes) that feels much longer. And I think a lot of us are glad when this kind of botched film comes to an end.