The movie has the apparent message, "Never go anywhere, and if you do, NEVER confront teenage hoodlums if they bother you."
I found the screenplay and the performances and the cinematography mostly quite well done and effective. Very brutal, harrowing, and well staged.
I have a major qualm with the downer ending: the whole point of a "survival horror" film is supposed to be that one lone survivor staggers out at the end of the movie, i.e." ...And I alone am left to tell the tale." (Moby Dick). You need an ending like that in this kind of movie - otherwise it's just a self-indulgenct exercise in sadism and torture.
Even a scrubby, scabby, incoherent, torture-porn movie like "Bunnyman" knew that.
As Roger Ebert once said (about another movie),"What's the point? To tell us that monsters and evil exist in the world? We already knew that."
Also: the movie makers were so eager to dash and subvert our expectations with the downer ending that they left a huge hole in the plot: There were simply too many witnesses to the wife's arrival at the family gathering to allow the father to kill her, and he would know this. And no woman (or mother) would let it happen. And all the wife would have to say is, "Your son killed my husband and tried to burn me alive, and I've been running from his gang all night", and the gathered parents and family, no matter HOW dysfunctional and enabling, would take her to the police to check it out further and have her punished or proven a liar.
So I am annoyed with the writer/director for deliberately dragging down a pretty good "hunting humans" scenario just because he wanted to embrace the current trend of "downer" endings and proved he could one up Eli Roth. It wasn't necessary, and it didn't make psychological sense (at least it happened off camera.) So in my mind, after the final scene (with the gang leader smirking in the mirror), there is one more scene where he comes downstairs to smirk at the body...only to be told that the family has dragged the wife off to the police, to pay for her "crimes"...which is where the truth will come out. (We don't have to see this part, it is just implied.)
To summarize: an effective piece of filmmaking.
BUT: I never want to watch it again, in contrast to the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which is 10 times grittier and more horrifying, and also holds up splendidly 4 decades later.
I found the screenplay and the performances and the cinematography mostly quite well done and effective. Very brutal, harrowing, and well staged.
I have a major qualm with the downer ending: the whole point of a "survival horror" film is supposed to be that one lone survivor staggers out at the end of the movie, i.e." ...And I alone am left to tell the tale." (Moby Dick). You need an ending like that in this kind of movie - otherwise it's just a self-indulgenct exercise in sadism and torture.
Even a scrubby, scabby, incoherent, torture-porn movie like "Bunnyman" knew that.
As Roger Ebert once said (about another movie),"What's the point? To tell us that monsters and evil exist in the world? We already knew that."
Also: the movie makers were so eager to dash and subvert our expectations with the downer ending that they left a huge hole in the plot: There were simply too many witnesses to the wife's arrival at the family gathering to allow the father to kill her, and he would know this. And no woman (or mother) would let it happen. And all the wife would have to say is, "Your son killed my husband and tried to burn me alive, and I've been running from his gang all night", and the gathered parents and family, no matter HOW dysfunctional and enabling, would take her to the police to check it out further and have her punished or proven a liar.
So I am annoyed with the writer/director for deliberately dragging down a pretty good "hunting humans" scenario just because he wanted to embrace the current trend of "downer" endings and proved he could one up Eli Roth. It wasn't necessary, and it didn't make psychological sense (at least it happened off camera.) So in my mind, after the final scene (with the gang leader smirking in the mirror), there is one more scene where he comes downstairs to smirk at the body...only to be told that the family has dragged the wife off to the police, to pay for her "crimes"...which is where the truth will come out. (We don't have to see this part, it is just implied.)
To summarize: an effective piece of filmmaking.
BUT: I never want to watch it again, in contrast to the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which is 10 times grittier and more horrifying, and also holds up splendidly 4 decades later.