Peelers

It was three things that made me pick up "Peelers" and give it a chance. The first thing was, of course, that it is a horror movie, and I am a huge fan of the horror genre and always have been. Secondly, then the movie's DVD cover did look rather interesting; I mean, a dismembered leg hanging on a dancing pole above a body on the floor. Thirdly, I noticed the word "infected" in the synopsis, so chances are that this was a zombie movie of sorts, and I am, after all, a huge zombie aficionado.

"Peelers" starts out quite nicely at a good pace and throws the action, and then it trails over into the intro which is accompanied by a rather interesting choice of music. So yeah, I will say that "Peelers" is off to a great start. However, after a somewhat impressive start, the movie slows down in pace and falls prey to the usual prolonged setting up the mood and setting over an extensive period, so it takes close to half an hour of the movie before it starts to pick up pace and become interesting.

The movie does fall prey to the stereotypical approach of pointless nudity that is often seen in horror movies. Sure, as the movie does take place at an adult dance club, but still... It hardly serves any purpose to the movie, aside from catering to a pseudo-perverse aspect of the horror genre fans - if one finds this to be appealing, of course. And there was, naturally, an abundance of dance scenes with scantily clad ladies, given the nature of the movie. Again, it serves no real purpose in order to promote the storyline. It is just eye candy, nothing else. I am not a prude and got no problem with nudity and the naked body, but when it becomes a nuisance and a drag to the pacing of a storyline in a movie that I sat down to watch, then it definitely becomes annoying.

I wasn't familiar with anyone on the cast list for "Peelers", and I do like watching new faces on the screen. And admittedly then people in the movie were doing good jobs with their given roles and characters. The acting was good and they did have some interesting characters and dialogue to work with from writers Lisa DeVita and Sevé Schelenz.

There is actually a good amount of blood and gore to be seen in this movie, which definitely was somewhat of a factor that sort of made it up for all the pointless nudity and wasting of screen time with dancing and other such things that hardly served any purpose to the movie.

Another thing that "Peelers" suffers under is the stereotypical approach of having filmed everything in the dark. So many of the scenes were filmed with an annoying lack of light, which meant that a lot of detail were lost and it was just downright frustrating to sit and watch one dark scene after another. This was especially annoying because if they had opted for brighter and better lighting then the movie could have been so much more fulfilling to watch.

And much to my disappointment, then it turned out that "Peelers" wasn't a zombie movie, but it was more of deranged maniacal killers on the prowl.

"Peelers" was a horror movie with the right intentions and the right ideas, but unfortunately those things were lost along the way as naked women seemed to become the main focus of the movie.