No One Lives (2012)

Flynn: "If I wanted to hear from an asshole, I'd rip you a new one."

By Ryûhei Kitamura
With Luke Evans, Adelaide Clemens and Derek Magyar

I remember watching Ryûhei Kitamura's The Midnight Meat Train (2008) and while I didn't like it that much, I thought it had some great visuals. Since the rating of No One Lives was pretty good for a horror movie, I decided to see it.

The movie starts with a couple travelling and talking about relocating. The discussion shifts and it seems that the girl is jealous because the man seems to know another girl. They stop for the night and end up in a restaurant where a group of crooks are eating. The crook with the biggest mouth decides to eat on the girl and bothers the couple a little but he's stopped by his mates. When the couple goes back to their motel, they are abducted and handcuffed and their car is brought to the crooks' house where the toughest of them takes care of the couple. However, things don't go as planned when the girl kills herself on the crook's blade, and the unnamed man breaks free and kills him. Back at the house, the crooks are checking out their loot, but the trunk of the car has a girl in it.

I was disappointed with the movie. I thought it started off well, and I even liked the sex scene which is fairly rare. Basically the whole movie revolves around the idea that the crooks messed up with "the wrong guy" and they will pay for it. There isn't much more than this, though it tries to develop some emotional connections between the kidnapped girl and her status of being in-between the crooks and the unnamed man but it doesn't get far enough to be interesting.

The movie develops in a very straightforward manner and does justice to its title. The killing scenes aren't that entertaining and after seeing the first one, it felt like they were just being repeated with slightly different circumstances. I think it lacked originality as the theme has been used before. There were no likable characters which made it hard to root for anyone as even the victims seemed pretty bad.

When it comes to the good things, I'd mention the scene where he hides and comes out of a body; this was the highest point of the movie. Luke Evans' cold killer looks worked the best here, though I had hoped there would be more development on his character.

I liked: Started off nicely.

I disliked: Lacks originality. Poorly developed, and almost irritating characters.

20/100
I can't think of a good reason to recommend it. I did enjoy a few scenes but it really doesn't make up for the whole film.