Bane (2008) User Reviews

Overly long low-budget nonsense

[cookie666 · 3/10 · 4 June 2009]

The film opens with four women waking up in a room, they have no memory of their lives before nor do they know where they are. The women show "character" immediately - there's the emotional one, the tough one, the sensitive one and the heroine. The women are subjected to various tests, which are conducted by a callous scientist and his assistants who talk like robots and look like they belong rather to a street rave. The action is like slime - sticky and drags on forever. The last quarter of the film, however, sees a change of pace and the viewer is poured over with information that literally comes out of the blue and quite frankly makes no sense.

The whole feel of "Bane" is bizarre - it tried to be too original and ended up making a mess out of itself. It's not a least bit interesting to watch either, it tries to be gory, psychological and supernatural all at the same time and fails miserably in all genres.

BANE-ality...

[geraldblake12 · 2/10 · 30 October 2009]

It's discouraging that a listless film like Bane got solid festival play. The film is easily the most meandering, pointless horror movie I've seen in a long time. The filmmakers deserve kudos for managing to screw up an intriguing concept, which involves a bunch of women waking up in a test facility with no memory of how they got there. The viewer is intentionally kept in the dark about what the heck is going on, presumably to help ratchet up the tension, but the approach only works when the plot - what's actually happening - is fun and interesting to watch. Instead, we get scene after poorly acted scene of the women freaking out about their ordeal, being interviewed with electrodes on their temples, undergoing various torturous experiments that are neither scary nor particularly intricate, and being stalked by a robed figure that the producers aped from Hostel. Sound intriguing? Believe me it's not. The film also suffers from taking place (mostly) in a visually dull environment comprised of austere corridors, all of which are lit the exact same way. It gets very tiresome, very fast. Avoid.

Try to keep up

[AHigglytownHero · 2/10 · 17 March 2011]

So you wanna know about bane? ill try to inform you the best i can but honestly i really don't know what i just sat through (omg it just wouldn't end) So here it goes *SPOILER* 4 girls wake up in a room with no memory of how they got there or even who they are, one of them is Katherine and i had forgotten the other 3 names 30 minutes into the movie they are experimented on but nothing serious stuff like how are you today? and look at these disturbing images without closing your eyes or ill cut them out. But late at night a man with a knife comes into there cell and cuts a number into one of them and leaves the number refers to the time he will come back to kill them, why do they have to die at that time no one knows so this keeps happening until one (Katherine) is left she manages to escape her cell killing the main scientist and a few others till she finds the 2nd in charge who explains everything *GET READY* so basically aliens have taken over the earth they have captured one and found out they have no feelings (happyness anger sadness nothing) so they took the 4 girls wiped them of their memories and did everything for their emotions you also find that Katherine was a member of the team and willingly signed up for this (great idea right?) Also you find out that her and th second in command were married.so they strap her and the captured alien up to their emotion machine (they never give it a name) and she starts thinking about everything that went down and discovers that as she remembers the fear and angry it doesn't effect the alien but when she remembers the love and the bond of the 4 girls it kills the alien so everyone cheers and sends her happy thoughts of love to kill all the aliens the end.......

yup thats right they saved the world with the power of LOVE the evil alien race could have been taken out by the care bears so I'm assuming you got lots of questions well so do i this movie is long, confusing and just plain awful the gore is good for what gore they got but its not enough to save this movie 2-10

too long, too boring

[hopla68 · 3/10 · 20 August 2009]

4 women in a holding cell, creepy doctors, and a man with a large kitchen utensil carving away in the nightly hours... and a - drum roll- twist in the end.

The above got me sold on it, however when watching it a couple of other problems were quickly visible.

Uninteresting actors with bad lines, no budget - the holding cell looks like a part of a construction yard with plastic- way way way too long and the twist is not that bad but played out way too long.. I see a recurrence here, but anyway.

Tighter editing - the film can cut away at least 30 minutes- better actors and a better story would have done miracles. If you watch it now keep the remote handy to fast forward and check if you still give a damn about the twist in the end, I know I didn't.

Don't waste your time.

Someone spent good money to produce this?

[dgci-net · 1/10 · 2 August 2009]

I gave this a one because IMDb doesn't offer a zero-option. Less than zero would be closer to the truth.

In what at first at least appears to be a bad rip-off of the SAW movies, which weren't that great to start with, we find four women in the situation of being forced together with no memories and a lot of unpleasantness ahead of them.

From there it goes downhill. ZERO plot for most of the movie, completely forgettable and unlikeable characters, a HORRIFIC soundtrack that had me reducing the volume to barely audible, and nearly complete predictability. No surprises at all at the end.

Thinking of watching this one? Go watch paint dry while pondering your navel. The time spent will be more productive.

Ugh

[oldguy7547-1 · 2/10 · 6 June 2009]

This was like a train wreck in that I felt compelled to watch it to the end... That being said your best bet is to not even start. The movie made very little sense even after the explanation which was at the very end. The gore part was not. The horror part was not and I could go on. The only positive thing I might say is that the actress Sophia Dawny did a pretty good job and was convincing as a woman who was terrified yet started to grow strength as the movie progressed. The woman supposedly had their memories wiped but she had flash backs but they were confusing. They could have handled them the flash backs in a different way although not sure what. There were so many unanswered questions that my head spun.Don't waste your money buying it or your time if it ever comes onto TV.

Low budget film.. But a good twist

[grace-836-301003 · 5/10 · 5 November 2013]

The film has a good original story with nice twist at the end. The film is unusual IN THAT IT CROSSES GENRES from horror to science fiction. Its also unpredictable.

**Contains Spoilers**

The acting is dull particularly with the girls, and there's to much screaming and hysteria. They all seem very cartoonish. However the one performance i think that really holds the film together is DANIEL JORDAN as Dr Murdoch/Surgeon. Great presence and the director should have given him a much more central role.

**Contains Spoilers**

To sum up a good unusual film with a surprising twist

Succeeds in creep and gore,, fails in plot (spoiler!)

[weepingwillow314 · 1/10 · 30 June 2010]

Four women wake up in a room without their memories, and their only clue to their identities are names written on their wrist-bands. Cue very creepy, gory and (the director hopes) terrifying goings-on. Of course here's a twist at the end.

***here be the spoiler!***

The problem with the entire movie is: the twist is revealed in the first minutes of the film. There was only one woman, in the opening credits, to sit down in the chair calmly and receive the injection. That gave it away entirely, and the "explanation" at the end is so little-explored within the film, they just don't matter.

Just lost two hours of my life

[spellerwix · 2/10 · 3 August 2011]

Please do not waste any time in watching this movie. I feel like asking the producers to give me back the last two hours of my life, in which I could be doing something worth while.

I was prepared to stop watching after fifteen minutes. I only carried on because I felt like I deserved an explanation why this film was horrific. I was hoping that would come at the end...NO NO NO NO NO

The money used to make this film would have been better spent going to charity, to save actual lives.

In hind sight, I should have read the reviews before wasting my time....

Insulting rubbish --- avoid it !

[FountainPen · 1/10 · 11 May 2018]

One of my favourite genres is horror. This movie is extremely poor, badly written, awful to watch. Avoid it all all costs, truly !!

Great until the end...

[vengeance20 · 6/10 · 10 June 2012]

To be honest it was pretty good for a film that wasn't put on the big screen! The gore & the suspense etc all added to the film!

But the story line just made no sense at all. About 80% of the film was good the gore the suspense etc was great! But 20% of it just blow it! The sci-fi & the whole story line just come from nowhere was far too much to take in & think about.

***Contains Spoilers***

The way I see it, if say that most of the film before the terrible ending were to be about the 4 women waking up, gazed not knowing what had happened because their memories were wiped, then getting tortured by asking them questions they don't know the answer to & showing them horrible images then threatening them to not to look away or else they'll get the eyes cut out & getting tested etc. Etc. Then one of them being left alive & killing the doctors & the masked killer with the cutlass shaped knife & escaping would have been great but when the second commander turned out to be her husband & she signed up to do it etc, etc didn't add up at all!

So overall it's good for gore, violence & strong horror. But the ending & story coming out all at once instead of it being mentioned a'little bit every few minutes would have been a bit better! But the whole Sci-Fi theme ruined it totally. Especially when it was LOVE that killed the aliens! I mean it confused me to think it was more a of a romantic ending than a horror like ending!

Garbage in movie form

[Kaos657 · 1/10 · 2 September 2022]

This was the first "did not finish" I have had in years. I tried watching it, I even scrolled through to see the "gore" that some people said is good in these reviews... Nope. If the one woman beat the man to death and his mask didn't have any dents, and only blood around his face that looks more like water and red food coloring then that isn't gore... That is a failed halloween decoration.

This movie tries too hard to be good. The acting isn't believable, the women are not likeable, their captors are not even good at being bad.

It really feels like this title is more of a warning, "BANE: An Experiment in Human Suffering" because if you watch this movie you are going to suffer from unescapable boredom.

Plenty of gore, shame about the rest of it.

[Stevieboy666 · 4/10 · 30 March 2024]

"Who are you?" "I don't know who I am.." Four young women wake up in a (very flimsy looking) prison cell and they are all suffering with memory loss, not even knowing their own names. They are subjected to horrific experiments. Until now this had been sat in my DVD pile for years, I finally watched it, was it worth the wait? Sadly not. Looking at the sleeve I wrongly assumed it would be another torture horror movie like "Saw" or "Hostel" but in fact it is a very low budget British film that combines horror with science fiction and prison escape. Young director James Eaves introduces the film, he states that it was made on a tiny budget and shot on digital. The best thing about Bane is it's strong gore and violence. The acting is generally alright and the women look nice in their tight light green T-shirts, however Daniel Jordan as the evil Dr Murdoch is terrible. The ludicrous plot features an evil alien, human in shape but with weird tentacles, behind these human experiments, it is all very unconvincing and confusing. Then there's the 108 minutes running time (DVD), it is WAY too long, It's a shame as I felt that Bane could have been a lot better but as it stands it's only worth seeing for the gore (you may want to hit the FFWD button).

Wasn't Great, but wasn't Horrible

[codyp8103 · 7/10 · 14 December 2010]

This movie is better than what the reviews say. Although it is definitely not the best, it is certainly not the worst! Sometimes the screaming gets a little old, but if you are thinking about watching this movie, do it! There isn't much of a plot in the beginning, but it will draw you in soon enough and then you'll find yourself sitting at the end saying, "wow."

**Spoiler**

Oh, and unless you really pay attention to the opening, you're not going to expect the ending. It was a great twist that I wasn't expecting!

Imagine Killing Room & District 9 Combined

[in1984 · 6/10 · 26 November 2009]

It didn't turn out quite as good as either of them, though still interesting paranoid sci-fi.

It does in fact amount to a combination of Killing Room and District 9, as odd as that may sound. More of an interesting concept than anything else because the acting and direction fail to keep it moving.

The one story-line problem is that the weapon against aliens they're developing has no realistic way to be applied on a large scale and would likely fail without the ability to isolate individual aliens, which given the description of events and aliens does not seem plausible. Fortunately, it doesn't ruin the film.

BANE ,Alittle 'SAW' & a tad 'H P LOVECRAFT' this is a movie with some stuff to Frighten !

[guestar57 · 6/10 · 9 March 2012]

BANE ,Alittle 'SAW' & a tad 'H P LOVECRAFT' this is a movie with some

stuff to Frighten ! So these ladies may have been kidnapped,That's pretty bad news.

Some medical types are experimenting with/on them…Not good.

Is that a Cthulhu alien ??? So,These factors are unsettling and then they get a 'Time To Die' carved into their bodies.

There is a lot going on and the title BANE was never explained to our satisfaction, Were the producers playing off the release of new BATMAN film with the villain, BANE or is it the explanation of the word -a person or thing that ruins or spoils.