If you're going to make a movie that lambastes crappy reality TV shows, you should be sure it's not going to suck so much it'll make the audience wish they were watching a crappy reality TV show instead. That's a lesson these filmmakers obviously never learned, because they churned out a film that makes VH1's Flavor of Love look like Masterpiece Theatre.
This astoundingly idiotic story goes wrong from the very beginning. It's about a group of college kids who think they're participating in a reality show for a million dollars but are really the subjects of a madman's murderous scheme, where getting voted off the show means getting helped into an early grave. But before we get to any of that, the first 10 minutes of so of the movie is spent bizarrely focused on the backstory of the madman. It turns out the insane Philip (a bloated and doughy Edward Furlong) had been a contestant on a reality show like The Bachelorette, where he was rejected. So, Cruel World starts with Philip showing back up and killing the woman who rejected him (Jaime Pressly) and the other guy she picked (Sam Page), and THEN the college kids arrive and the actual plot of Philip killing them begins.
I'm not sure I've ever seen another horror movie that starts out by not only explaining exactly who the killer is and what he's doing, but also immediately kills off the characters that should be his main target. It's like watching an episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk and Spock get disintegrated by the Klingons in the first scene and the rest of the show is watching a bunch of those guys in red shirts getting picked off one by one. I'm not sure if these filmmakers thought they were being clever by doing it this way or what. The effect, though, is to rid the story of any possible, mystery, suspense, tension or intrigue.
The only way to recover from that sort of colossal storytelling mistake would be to make the slayings of the college students incredibly violent and compelling and the satire of crappy reality TV shows tremendously clever and sharp. None of that happens. What the viewer gets are unbelievably feeble pastiches of reality show conventions like "alliances", "elimination challenges" and "drunken hook-ups". The satirical extent of the script is to have characters reference specific reality shows in their dialog. There's also practically no sex or nudity in this movie and the violent scenes are so pathetic it's like watching Gargamel try and kill The Smurfs.
The college kids in Cruel World are so shallow and contrived, they make Spencer and Heidi from The Hills look like characters out of Tolstoy. I can't really tell if any of them can act or if they're just natural douchebags. Edward Furlong, however, is genuinely pitiful. He looks and performs like a cleaned-up homeless guy who's still under the influence of various chemical substances. Furlong doesn't need to be making a movie about reality TV shows. He needs to be on a reality TV show - the one where celebrities go to rehab. The kid from Terminator 2 turning into this kind of a shambling mess is a more amazing transformation than Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of California.
Cruel World is so atrocious, it's not like it was made by people who had never made a movie before. It's like these filmmakers had never seen a movie before. Or a play. Or a book. Or even a puppet show. This is the type of film where 6th grade dropouts watch it and say "I could make something better than this". So, unless these filmmakers were all 5th grade dropouts they should really be embarrassed by this disaster.
Unless you're planning to show Cruel World to a child actor as a cautionary tale (watch out or you could end up like Edward Furlong!), there's no reason for anyone to rent this DVD.
This astoundingly idiotic story goes wrong from the very beginning. It's about a group of college kids who think they're participating in a reality show for a million dollars but are really the subjects of a madman's murderous scheme, where getting voted off the show means getting helped into an early grave. But before we get to any of that, the first 10 minutes of so of the movie is spent bizarrely focused on the backstory of the madman. It turns out the insane Philip (a bloated and doughy Edward Furlong) had been a contestant on a reality show like The Bachelorette, where he was rejected. So, Cruel World starts with Philip showing back up and killing the woman who rejected him (Jaime Pressly) and the other guy she picked (Sam Page), and THEN the college kids arrive and the actual plot of Philip killing them begins.
I'm not sure I've ever seen another horror movie that starts out by not only explaining exactly who the killer is and what he's doing, but also immediately kills off the characters that should be his main target. It's like watching an episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk and Spock get disintegrated by the Klingons in the first scene and the rest of the show is watching a bunch of those guys in red shirts getting picked off one by one. I'm not sure if these filmmakers thought they were being clever by doing it this way or what. The effect, though, is to rid the story of any possible, mystery, suspense, tension or intrigue.
The only way to recover from that sort of colossal storytelling mistake would be to make the slayings of the college students incredibly violent and compelling and the satire of crappy reality TV shows tremendously clever and sharp. None of that happens. What the viewer gets are unbelievably feeble pastiches of reality show conventions like "alliances", "elimination challenges" and "drunken hook-ups". The satirical extent of the script is to have characters reference specific reality shows in their dialog. There's also practically no sex or nudity in this movie and the violent scenes are so pathetic it's like watching Gargamel try and kill The Smurfs.
The college kids in Cruel World are so shallow and contrived, they make Spencer and Heidi from The Hills look like characters out of Tolstoy. I can't really tell if any of them can act or if they're just natural douchebags. Edward Furlong, however, is genuinely pitiful. He looks and performs like a cleaned-up homeless guy who's still under the influence of various chemical substances. Furlong doesn't need to be making a movie about reality TV shows. He needs to be on a reality TV show - the one where celebrities go to rehab. The kid from Terminator 2 turning into this kind of a shambling mess is a more amazing transformation than Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of California.
Cruel World is so atrocious, it's not like it was made by people who had never made a movie before. It's like these filmmakers had never seen a movie before. Or a play. Or a book. Or even a puppet show. This is the type of film where 6th grade dropouts watch it and say "I could make something better than this". So, unless these filmmakers were all 5th grade dropouts they should really be embarrassed by this disaster.
Unless you're planning to show Cruel World to a child actor as a cautionary tale (watch out or you could end up like Edward Furlong!), there's no reason for anyone to rent this DVD.