This movie is a little weird.
First weird decision is that the movie starts off with having the viewer read the "legend" that makes up the main premise of the movie - this immediately got a groan from me. If you expect people to read, the movie that comes afterwords has to be amazing to the nth degree. A below-average revenge-porn horror is not that.
The second weird decision is making the above-mentioned 'legend' part of the premise - the main character was already a super-soldier lady who almost got away based on her own skills and showed herself more than competent. I can't help but feel that I would have cheered her on a little harder if it had just been her, one-woman'ing it up on her quest for vengeance (not that the possession changes that a huge deal - it's kind of hard to see to which degree she's possessed). Of course, that would have made it even more of a 'Grave' clone. It also didn't help that the 'legend' part was done so badly - Ayiana's costume was horrible and she spoke English when performing her little ritual (extremely jarring).
Third weird decision is the pacing - there is pretty much no tension built at any point in the movie. It goes nothing-action-a bit of tension-action-nothing-action. The only real tension seemed to be when main lady was running from the villains after they killed Fiancé Guy but even that was quite short - what should have been the main focus, killing the villains, was completely unsatisfying and boring in the end with no tension or variance.
On the formal side of things, acting was pretty bad. I didn't believe her, her fiancé or the villains for a second. Dialogue was pretty bad - the obnoxious villain sidekick was painful to listen to and all the others were almost as bad. Sound effects were pretty bad - gun shot sounds stand out as particularly mediocre and meh. Visual effects are very meh as well; it's often very obvious that the weapons don't make contact or cut aways are used to avoid using effects.
Most egregious of all, though - and absolutely the funniest - is when Fiancé Guy talks to his bro over FaceTime. It's a still-image with normal (way too high quality, no options displayed) video imposed on it. That was the moment I knew what kind of movie this would be and I laughed and laughed.
About the only things that seemed likable were that the relationship between the lovers was portrayed nicely (if acted somewhat sub-par) - light and humorous - and the strong female lead. She was clearly the one in the relationship associated with more "masculine" traits and the fiancé in turn showed some more "feminine" traits which made them seem like more substantial characters instead of the usual cardboard cut outs.
In short, if you want rape-revenge horror, go for 'I Spit on Your Grave' - if you want possessed revenge horror, go for 'Savaged'. Neither were high art but both much better than this.
First weird decision is that the movie starts off with having the viewer read the "legend" that makes up the main premise of the movie - this immediately got a groan from me. If you expect people to read, the movie that comes afterwords has to be amazing to the nth degree. A below-average revenge-porn horror is not that.
The second weird decision is making the above-mentioned 'legend' part of the premise - the main character was already a super-soldier lady who almost got away based on her own skills and showed herself more than competent. I can't help but feel that I would have cheered her on a little harder if it had just been her, one-woman'ing it up on her quest for vengeance (not that the possession changes that a huge deal - it's kind of hard to see to which degree she's possessed). Of course, that would have made it even more of a 'Grave' clone. It also didn't help that the 'legend' part was done so badly - Ayiana's costume was horrible and she spoke English when performing her little ritual (extremely jarring).
Third weird decision is the pacing - there is pretty much no tension built at any point in the movie. It goes nothing-action-a bit of tension-action-nothing-action. The only real tension seemed to be when main lady was running from the villains after they killed Fiancé Guy but even that was quite short - what should have been the main focus, killing the villains, was completely unsatisfying and boring in the end with no tension or variance.
On the formal side of things, acting was pretty bad. I didn't believe her, her fiancé or the villains for a second. Dialogue was pretty bad - the obnoxious villain sidekick was painful to listen to and all the others were almost as bad. Sound effects were pretty bad - gun shot sounds stand out as particularly mediocre and meh. Visual effects are very meh as well; it's often very obvious that the weapons don't make contact or cut aways are used to avoid using effects.
Most egregious of all, though - and absolutely the funniest - is when Fiancé Guy talks to his bro over FaceTime. It's a still-image with normal (way too high quality, no options displayed) video imposed on it. That was the moment I knew what kind of movie this would be and I laughed and laughed.
About the only things that seemed likable were that the relationship between the lovers was portrayed nicely (if acted somewhat sub-par) - light and humorous - and the strong female lead. She was clearly the one in the relationship associated with more "masculine" traits and the fiancé in turn showed some more "feminine" traits which made them seem like more substantial characters instead of the usual cardboard cut outs.
In short, if you want rape-revenge horror, go for 'I Spit on Your Grave' - if you want possessed revenge horror, go for 'Savaged'. Neither were high art but both much better than this.