OFFSPRING (2009)

Studio:   Arrow Video
Director: Andrew van den Houten
Writer:   Jack Ketchum
Producer: Robert Tonino, William M. Miller
Stars:    Art Hindle, Ahna Tessler, Amy Hargreaves, Andrew Elvis Miller, Tommy Nelson, Holter Graham, Taylor John Piedmonte, Pollyanna McIntosh, Erick Kastel

Review Score:

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Summary:

A centuries-old clan of inbred cannibals attacks an unsuspecting family and their friends in rural New England.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

David Halbard sees a feral blonde woman standing naked in his yard during the night. David goes to sleep after verifying that his wife Amy and their infant daughter Melissa are okay.

Loreen Ellen Kaltsas stumbles home drunk to find her babysitter and baby brutally butchered. Four feral children kill Loreen before taking her dead baby back to their cave in a bag.

Retired police officer George Chandler investigates the Kaltsas house with Dead River County deputy Vic Manetti. Having seen a similar crime before, George tells the cops that he believes they are dealing with a clan of inbred cannibals descended from a missing lighthouse keeper in the 1800s. George, Vic, and other officers set out to find the feral clan’s hidden cave.

Family friend Claire Carey arrives at the Halbard house with her eight-year-old son Luke. While Claire tells Amy about serving her abusive husband Stephen with divorce papers, Luke explores the surrounding woods.

Stephen calls Claire to say he is on his way to Amy’s house to talk to Claire. David calls the police about Stephen, who oddly advise him to ward off anyone he doesn’t recognize with a gun.

Luke discovers a treehouse in the woods. Luke returns to the Halbard house with a small collection of bones.

On his drive to Dead River, Stephen picks up a hitchhiker named Susan. Stephen ends up sleazily insulting Susan, groping her breast, and kicking her out of his car.

Inside the cannibal cave, a feral Woman tortures a shackled man. The Woman and a male cannibal also flog the feral blonde who tells them about the infant she saw at the Halbard house. The Woman plots to use Amy’s healthy baby to heal Loreen’s dead one.

The cannibal clan assaults the Halbard house. David is violently eviscerated while Amy is captured. Claire escapes with Luke and baby Melissa.

Stephen arrives at the house. The cannibals attack Stephen before he manages to drive away.

George and Vic find Stephen driving away from the house. Stephen tells them what happened. Stephen runs into the woods when he hears a dispatcher tell the officers that they received a call from David Halbard warning them about Stephen.

Claire fights a pursuing cannibal so that Luke can get away with Melissa. Claire is captured. Luke hides Melissa in the treehouse while he goes in search of help.

Responding to screams in the distance, George, Vic, and another cop end up in a brutal battle with several cannibals. Vic and a feral child die. The Woman leaves George for dead.

The Woman captures Stephen on a beach. Stephen, Claire, and Amy are taken to the cannibal cave where the two women are tortured.

The Woman demands to know where Amy’s infant is. Stephen tells the Woman that she can find out by torturing Claire. The cannibal clan begins viciously biting and assaulting Claire.

George recovers. George kills the feral blonde. George finds Luke, who points him toward the cave’s location.

Forced to nurse a cave baby that bites her breast, Amy threatens to kill the infant if the cannibals do not stop torturing Claire. Stephen crawls away in the subsequent commotion, but George pistol-whips him outside the cave.

George enters the cave and begins shooting cannibals before the Woman can kill Amy. George is stabbed to death. The Woman collapses from a gunshot. The other cannibals are killed.

Amy and Claire survive. The two women stagger past Stephen and reconnect with Luke outside.

The Woman recovers and leaves the cave with the shackled man. The Woman decapitates Stephen and drinks the blood from his head. The shackled man stabs the Woman in her stomach. The Woman snaps the man’s neck, removes the blade, and walks off into the woods.

While paramedics help Amy and Claire recover, Luke runs ahead to show the cops where he left Melissa. A feral child attacks Luke when he climbs into the treehouse. Luke kills the feral child with a hand ax. The feral child’s body falls to the ground below. Luke recovers baby Melissa. The feral infant is also seen still alive in the cave.

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Review:

I only became aware of director Andrew van den Houten’s 2009 thriller “Offspring” after first becoming fascinated with Lucky McKee’s 2011 film “The Woman” (review here). While I don’t recall it being common knowledge at the time, McKee crafted “The Woman” as a follow-up focusing on Pollyanna McIntosh’s feral character, who made her filmic debut in “Offspring.”

I didn’t have a burning incentive to backtrack until it was announced that McIntosh’s 2019 directorial debut “Darlin’” (review here) would feature her titular cannibal a third time. This seemed as good of an opportunity as any to experience this loose trilogy from the beginning.

Except I’ve since discovered that “Offspring” isn’t actually the start of the saga either. Acclaimed novelist Jack Ketchum based “Offspring’s” screenplay on his same-named 1991 book which, as it turns out, is a sequel to his 1981 novel “Off Season.”

There’s a limit to how many blanks I’m willing to fill in before watching one movie. Apparently that limit encompasses two pseudo-prequels, but does not include devoting time to a novel too. What with the way this line keeps extending, I’ll probably eventually learn “Off Season” has its own precursor as well. Besides, if “Off Season’s” substance is as slim as “Offspring’s,” I can’t imagine I’m missing anything essential.

“Off Season” would seemingly only serve to explain why Art Hindle’s “Offspring” character, a retired cop named George, is called in to consult on a gruesome home invasion. George almost immediately exclaims that the culprits are a cave-dwelling clan of inbred cannibals descended from a lighthouse keeper who went missing in the 1800s. This would be a surprisingly specific, crazy conclusion to come to without the additional information that he’s encountered this scenario before.

Consisting of ‘The Woman,’ a man, several children, and a few other ferals, the cannibal clan sets their sights on the infant daughter of a rural couple living near the woods. The clan has a history of kidnapping babies that they raise as their own, but they want this child for another purpose. A family friend happens to be visiting with her eight-year-old son, and her abusive ex-husband is en route as well. This provides the feral freaks with a full house of targets ripe for ripping apart with teeth, tools, and bare hands, unless local police can close in on the cannibals first.

Although it’s definitely dog-eared by its plainly low-budget origins, I wouldn’t necessarily say “Offspring” qualifies as a “bad” movie. Yet I still can’t recommend it because it barely qualifies as a story. An illusion of cursory character development exists. Really though, the thin narrative is nothing more than a setup for slaughter as “Offspring” becomes a canvas for creating a nihilistic horror show of savage brutality and cannibalistic carnage.

Running only 74 minutes to begin with, “Offspring” spends an oddly inordinate amount of time on sequences that aren’t central to the paltry plot. In particular, ex-husband Stephen sees several scenes devoted exclusively to establishing his villainy, even when he isn’t onscreen. Stephen’s wife and her friend have a detailed discussion about Stephen’s mismanaged money, embezzlement, unpaid loans, forged documents, collateral foreclosures, IRS audit, alcoholism, physical abuse, child neglect, suspiciously missing boss, and his own nine-month disappearance before we even meet the man. Stephen then gets a full five-minute scene where he picks up an attractive hitchhiker, sleazily demeans her, gropes her breast, then boots her out of his car while slugging vodka with a sneer.

Stephen only needs one-tenth of that attention while technical details could use infinitely more. Exacerbated by frequently soft focus, camera blocking sometimes makes little sense. In one example, the camera points straight ahead while a cannibal twice bends completely out of frame to pick up a body on the ground. It’s a handheld shot, yet the operator strangely never tilts to follow the action, instead opting to stay centered on trees blurred in the background.

Comical costuming significantly lessens the cannibal clan’s fright factor. Instead of being believably mottled with mange, lice, and grime, the feral kids wear bouffant wigs that look like Dolly Parton stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. As with the uneven editing, acting, and cinematography, it’s difficult to discern what the production had in mind regarding how it intended to appear.

“Offspring” is a messy movie, both figuratively and literally. The figurative has to do with the sloppy staging and storytelling briefly mentioned above. The literal involves buckets of blood, bones, and viscera liberally decorating each milieu of vicious violence. Gorehounds hungry for the visual thrills of spilled guts and wet dismemberments will have their grindhouse-inspired dreams come true at regular intervals. Respites from the bleak butchery are fewer and farther between.

“Offspring” ends up too underfed to leave a valuable impression. If not for the interest inspired as a Jack Ketchum adaptation, or as the first onscreen appearance of Pollyanna McIntosh’s recurring character, “Offspring” would probably be otherwise dismissed as an unimportant entry in the killer country cannibal subgenre by now.

Review Score: 45

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