If there's one sub-genre of horror that I'd happily see disappear it's the torture genre. This sh!t bores the living hell out of me. Well the American torture films do anyway. I personally find the August Underground films to be complete piles of crap. Boring pieces of sh!t. There is nothing to making a torture flick. Grab a camera, some actors that aren't afraid to scream, cry, get naked and have blood effects on them. Bingo, you've got yourself a low-budget torture flick. Scrapbook only saves itself from being a boring pile of crap due to a couple interesting ideas. It's obvious most people hate this movie, but it's undeniable that having a serial killer keeping a scrapbook with his victims' photos and thoughts written inside is a good idea. You add a couple big name Hollywood stars and put some cash into it, you'll have a hit. But when you have a low-budget film with amateur actors, it's ingredients for failure. But, Scrapbook isn't an entire failure, it gives off a dirty, gritty feel that I really disliked (which is a good thing), a couple scenes of hope for the victim, and like I said above, a good idea for a serial killer movie. But the movie is plagued by crappy writing and amateur acting. The girl is always amateur, but the guy who plays Leonard wasn't entirely poor, he reminded me of Jason Mewes actually. But most of all, just like all these other torture flicks, there are zero scares. The tag-line for the film: "True horror is simply what one human being can do to another." Sorry, but I don't agree with that at all. If you're saying this movie is true horror, then I'm not a true horror fan. First and foremost, the reason I enjoy horror is to be frightened. I'm not saying I don't like to be shocked by disturbing images, I actually love watching disturbing movies. But when it's done in such a tedious, bland manner, I'd much rather waste my time doing something else.
Overall Scrapbook is just another below average flick that doesn't do anything special. Sure it has "the goods" when it comes down to a nasty flick, but overall it's very weak film-making. My favorite scenes of the movie was when they were focusing on the whole scrapbook idea, which unfortunately came near the last half of the film and was used sporadically between scenes. And if they focused on that instead of showing the chicks awful tattoos and his limp weiner, the film would have been much better. Instead of highlighting the scrapbook idea, and using that to make the shocking scenes more shocking, they do the opposite and show the shocking scenes first and foremost and then talk about the Scrapbook idea. It seems like they knew they had a cool idea for a serial killer, but didn't really know how to use it. Or maybe they didn't what do I know. And also at 95 minutes, the movie goes on a little too long. I seriously have no clue why they included the horse dude guy....just to kill him, and show how crazy Leonard is. I think we got the idea he was nuts when he whipped out the old Scrapbook....and raping the chick was also kinda a good way of saying he's serious. These "shocking" torture flicks are really a played out genre and I seriously hope they die out....unless they tack on some big Hollywood actors and a big budget, then it'd be awesome....right? ;)
Overall Scrapbook is just another below average flick that doesn't do anything special. Sure it has "the goods" when it comes down to a nasty flick, but overall it's very weak film-making. My favorite scenes of the movie was when they were focusing on the whole scrapbook idea, which unfortunately came near the last half of the film and was used sporadically between scenes. And if they focused on that instead of showing the chicks awful tattoos and his limp weiner, the film would have been much better. Instead of highlighting the scrapbook idea, and using that to make the shocking scenes more shocking, they do the opposite and show the shocking scenes first and foremost and then talk about the Scrapbook idea. It seems like they knew they had a cool idea for a serial killer, but didn't really know how to use it. Or maybe they didn't what do I know. And also at 95 minutes, the movie goes on a little too long. I seriously have no clue why they included the horse dude guy....just to kill him, and show how crazy Leonard is. I think we got the idea he was nuts when he whipped out the old Scrapbook....and raping the chick was also kinda a good way of saying he's serious. These "shocking" torture flicks are really a played out genre and I seriously hope they die out....unless they tack on some big Hollywood actors and a big budget, then it'd be awesome....right? ;)