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Mangler 3: Reborn,
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Jamie is having a really bad day. She got fired from
her job, her boyfriend broke up with her and on top
of that, she's just been kidnapped by a psychotic
plumber. Meanwhile, two thieves, a father and a son,
is just about to break into the psychotic plumber's
house unknowing of what's going on inside. Will
anyone survive or will they all fall victim of the
machine (which by the way is possessing the plumber).
In 1995 Tobe Hooper made an adaptation of Stephen
Kings story "The Mangler". This adaptation was, and
I think that most horror fans will agree with me,
absolutely terrible. Six years later, Artisan Ent
released the DTV sequel "The Mangler 2", which was
even more atrocious than its predecessor. So what
can one expect going into The Mangler 3? Well,
actually, one can expect a pretty good horror flick
with barely any connection to the previous two movies.
The Mangler Reborn pretty much ignores the previous
sequel and goes back to the original concept about a
man possessed by a killer machine. Now, to me, that
concept is pretty stupid, but what they've done here
is that they've made it more of a slasher flick than
a monster machine movie. This really worked surprisingly
well and you can tell that the two directors are fans
of "High Tension" as the gore and suspense scenes have
the same kind of atmosphere (well it was much more
intense and much more gory in High Tension but you
get the idea).
What bothered me about this movie was that the story
really wasn't tight enough. The movie kind of drags
and becomes a bit too slow-paced with time. There's
no real oomph in it and it never really gets a kick
start. It's clear to me that the only reason to why
this movie came out as good as it did was due to the
brilliant directing skills from the two directors,
Matt Cunningham and Erik Gardner so I really hope that
we will see more from them in the future.
The acting is also surprisingly good with a rather
strong DTV cast. Aimee Brooks gives us a strong
performance (even though she could've looked a bit
more angry at times), as does Weston Blakesley
playing the psychotic plumber. But the strongest
performance definitely comes from Reggie Bannister
even though he's only in the movie for a couple of
minutes. Overall, the acting really is above average.
The Mangler Reborn is by far the best one in this
series. The concept was poor from the beginning and
it really doesn't get much better than this so I hope
that this will be the last of The Mangler movies and
that these brilliant rookie directors move onto bigger
projects than this. It's a good film though so even
if you didn't like the previous two movies, do give
this one a chance or you might regret it.
Even though there are gallons of blood splatter in this
flick, there's no real gore. Some knife stabbings and
a heal in ones head really is just about as gory as
this movie gets.
While I quickly fell in love with the eerie, ambient
score, I did feel like it could have used a couple
of more intense tracks in the suspenseful scenes but
over-all, this was excellent.
The Mangler Reborn is nothing like its predecessors.
This might be the one with the lowest budget but if
you ask me, this is the one that should have gone
theatrical. Even if you hated the previous two movies,
I will definitely have to advice you to check this
one out. It might get a bit repetitive at times but
at the end, it's still a good movie.
Review By: AnthroFred
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