Unspeakable - Movie Review

Rating: 1 out of 5

You kinda deserve to have your ass handed to you when you title your film Unspeakable, but when you make a movie as God-awful as this one, you really deserve it.

The story begs for description but truly makes no sense at all. I'll try my best: Serial killer Jesse Mowatt (Pavan Grover, who also wrote the script) is fried in the electric chair, but it just won't take. He keeps coming back to life! Enter psychologist Diana Purlow (Dina Meyer), who has a kick-ass machine that can turn your memories into video. Somehow she feels this will help matters, and though angry prison warden (Dennis Hopper, yeah baby!) doesn't like the idea, she goes ahead anyway. The subsequent gore is balanced by mealworms crawling out of ears and split-open brains plus a bizarre story about Purlow having an abortion secreted in her past.

This is writer/star Grover's first film, and wouldn't you know it he's not trained in cinema at all. He's actually a doctor by vocation. This is just a passion for him. In recent years, the appearance of each of the other four members of the cast -- Hopper, Meyer, Lance Henriksen, and Jeff Fahey -- have all been separate warning signs that a bad movie is in the works. Their appearance here together is nothing short of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping all over this film. Viewers are warned to stay away at all costs.

The sad thing is that TV director Thomas J. Wright should have known better -- he's worked on X Files and CSI -- but the raw material he has to work with is unforgiving. It's one of the worst scripts written since the Ed Wood era, and try as you might, there's no way you can make that shine.

Facts and Figures

Year: 2002

Run time: 108 mins

In Theaters: Monday 1st December 2003

Distributed by: MGM Home Entertainment

Reviews

Contactmusic.com: 1 / 5

IMDB: 3.2 / 10

Cast & Crew

Director: Thomas J. Wright

Producer: Lee Friedlander

Screenwriter: Pavan Grover

Starring: Dina Meyer as Dr Diana Purlow, Dennis Hopper as Warden, Luce Rains as Prison Doctor, Pavan Grover as Jesse Mowat, Lance Henriksen as Jack Pitchford, Jeff Fahey as Governor, Michelle Wolff as Littlefield, Mark Voltura as Littlefield's Partner, Angelo Jaramillo as Flunky, J.D. Garfield as Federale Colonel, Michael Crabtree as Lieutenant, Anthony Dilio as Guard #2

Also starring: Lee Friedlander