The Inflicted Review

6.5/10

Doug Bradley became a household name of all horror fans from his role in "Pinhead" in the 80's horror series "Hellraiser." As I have found from this 2012 film, he is still going strong.  "The Inflicted" was a great horror movie from our time, and I feel that even though there are many mistakes throughout the film, it is still a lot of fun. 

The film itself starts very strangely, with the event of a father pushing his daughter into a pool, and letting her drown. This is disturbing to think of, because parents are supposed to love their children.  The worst part of the whole scene was that the father held his son back from saving her.

A large time gap occurs, and we see this young boy grown up. His name is David O' Hara, and he is a very intelligent medical student.  He is also very good with the ladies, and he even gets a beautiful girl named Melissa to come to his apartment.  Regardless of the positive things I have mentioned above, it is obvious that there is something wrong with him.  

The two students proceed to make love, and everything seems okay.  Things get weird as David kidnaps Melissa and ties her wrists to the ceiling.  He then tells her that he wants her to bore a child of his, so he can finally be a better father than his own was.  He also stated that if she refused, then he would kill her.  Out of fear, she accepts, but is then saved by an officer.  David then runs away, and resides at his father's house so he doesn't get caught.  These scenes were extremely disturbing, because of the sadistic and dark nature that surrounds it.  I found everything to be extremely interesting, and I was totally engrossed to see what happened next. 

The cast of this film was satisfactory. There were some weak links, but overall there was a lot of talent that portrayed a lot of emotion.  The writer and director of the film Matthan Harris did a really great job in the lead role of David.  He was like an emotional chameleon, because he could go from a suave gentleman to a complete pyscho with no effort at all.  Lindsay Hightower also did a great job in this film, by portraying the main protagonist Melissa Daniels.  She makes us feel so much sympathy, because of constant bad luck, whether it was the fate of her child she bore, or the torture she goes through with David.  Bill Moseley did an outstanding job in the role of David's father. The thing that really stuck out to me about his performance was the way that he could make us forget the fact that he was just as bad as David. A murderer of his daughter, and an accessory to the crimes of his son, he is a pretty rotten person.  We are tricked though by his sensitive side.  Whenever he sheds tears, we see an artificial goodness in him, and he tries his best to convince that he had reasons for his wrongdoings.  Doug Bradley worked well for his role of Agent Wilson, because he could give a fast and aggressive delivery to his dialogue, and he was a very convincing detective.  Sid Haig was decent in my opinion. He made his character of Doctor Gardner very likable, but it was hard to take him seriously at some points with the thought of his more evil roles in the back of my mind. 

This film featured some great slasher moments. There was lots of blood and gore, and very cool weapons were used to make this possible. Along with these scenes, there were plenty of other things to make this film sick and horrific. There were assaults, deaths of children, and the dismemberment of bodies.  This was one of the most twisted horror movies I've ever seen, and even though I enjoyed it a lot, some of it was a little bit much. 

One of the main weaknesses I could find spot was the film's score.  It was such a cheesy instrumentation, and it sounds like a sample track that can be found on Windows Media Player.  I honestly feel that an annoying vibe was created because of this mistake, and it dragged some of the scenes down a lot. 

Another weakness that came up a few times was some of the filming.  While the majority of the film looked great, there was a couple scenes that bugged me greatly.  The first one was the party scene.  The screen was a little too clear for my taste, and it made things look fake. The second scene I noticed immediately was the news scene. The color scheme looked terrible with the camera quality, and it looked like an iMovie. While there was only a couple scenes that ran into this problem, they were really apparent to me, and it affected the entire film as a whole.

Overall, I enjoyed this film a lot. There was an interesting plot, great cast, and some great slasher scenes. I did notice quite a few weaknesses along away, and while they were grating, they didn't screw the film up to the point that I didn't like it.  I recommend checking this little known film out, but I warn you that there are some touchy subjects that come up throughout the film, and are not for the faint of heart at all.