VISIBLE SCARS (2012)

Studio:       Echo Bridge Home Entertainment
Director:    Richard Turke
Writer:       Richard Turke
Producer:  Becca Jane Taylor
Stars:     Jillian Murray, Tom Sizemore, Hanna Hall, Deja Kreutzberg, Dave Parke, Timothy Ryan Cole, Jonas Fisch, Obaka Adedunyo, Jon Van Ness

Review Score: 

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Summary:

To escape her abusive boyfriend, a young woman seeks solitude in the woods only to be haunted by a tragic kidnapping and murder from the past. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

1993 – Mike Gillis strangles prostitute Becky Comfort and kidnaps her newborn twin daughters. Mike returns to his house in the woods and gifts the girls to his wife Claudia. He instructs her to keep the girls locked in the basement so that no one discovers that they are there.

2000 – From their window in the basement, the girls watch Mike burn clothing and drivers licenses in a barrel fire out back. Human body parts are shown in his refrigerator. He reminds the girls not to call him daddy as he gives them their dinner. When the girls ask for their mommy, Mike tells them that she is gone and that they are eating her remains.

2001 – A neighbor named Bill visits Mike and asks about Mike's wife, as she has not been seen for several years. He also asks about the kids, as he knows that Claudia used to buy girls’ clothes in town. Mike tells Bill that Claudia left him and took the kids. After Bill leaves, the girls accidentally knock over a lamp and start a fire. Mike falls while trying to rescue them and becomes trapped. The girls try to escape as the burning house collapses around them.

Present Day – A waitress notices wounds on Stacy Walker’s wrists. Stacy asks for directions to Mount Falls. She calls her roommate Kelly Strobe to tell Kelly that she is going to her uncle’s cabin and to not tell her abusive boyfriend Brad Samson.

On the eve of his retirement, Detective Black of the Beaumont Police Department receives a call from the man who now lives in Becky Comfort’s former trailer. The man claims to have found something underneath the home. Black speaks to the captain about joining other retired detectives who investigate cold cases. The captain discourages Black from continuing to investigate the Becky Comfort case, so Black steals the file.

Kelly tells her boyfriend Chris Watson that she is worried about Stacy. Brad comes looking for Stacy. Unaware of the abuse, Kelly falls for his tears and reveals where Stacy is, but insists on going there with Brad. Chris insists on going with his girlfriend.

Park Ranger Phil stops Stacy and warns her about the area. Detective Black collects the box found underneath Becky Comfort’s trailer. Stacy arrives at the cabin and clears her head by writing in a journal. During the night, Stacy hears a girl’s voice.

Detective Black meets with Maggie Meeker, Becky Comfort’s sister. The police think she is crazy because she once involved a psychic in the case. Black calls retired detective John Burke for help with background checks on three suspects, including Mike Gillis.

Stacey continues her meditation. It is revealed that she lost a pregnancy after being abused by Brad. Brad, Kelly, and Chris ask the park ranger about how to find Stacy. While hiking, Stacy finds an old doll infested with maggots. Burke gives Black the suspects’ files. Black interviews suspect Matt Warren. A lost hiker finds a body before being pursued and attacked by someone unseen.

Stacy meets two camping hippies and learns more about a girl who supposedly haunts the woods. The hippies convince Stacy to camp with them and she hears the girl’s voice again in the night. Stacy becomes upset when she finds everyone waiting for her back at the cabin. Kelly notices the handprint on Stacy’s wrist.

After being rebuffed by the sheriff, Black and Burke investigate the burned down remains of Gillis’ house on their own and discover a skull. Brad confronts Stacy about their relationship. Stacy hears the girl’s voice again when Brad becomes abusive. Brad leaves when Kelly arrives to find Stacy in a trance. Brad is then killed after hearing the voice.

Stacy tells Kelly about the voice and has a disturbing dream about the girl. Meanwhile, the sheriff and his deputies examine the remains at the Gillis residence. The sheriff tells the other officers to keep the discovery quiet. Later, the officers find a body. Kelly and Chris follow Stacy as she looks for the girl that she heard in the woods. They find Brad’s body.

After seeing her boyfriend being dragged away in a blood trail, the female hippie runs to Ranger Phil for help, but he is killed by someone unknown. Another ranger finds Phil’s body. While looking for help, Stacy sees the ghost of a little girl covered in blood.

Detective Black asks a storekeeper about Mike Gillis and learns about his wife’s purchases for little girls. The other ranger and the two deputies arrive and Black learns about the new murders.

Stacy, Kelly, and Chris return to the cabin. Now feral and fully grown, the two twin girls enter. They knock out Kelly and put Stacy in a closet while calling her “mommy.” The girls then decapitate Chris. The deputies investigate the cabin and discover Chris’ body. The girls kill the deputies, but one of them manages to shoot one of the girls first.

Locked in the bathroom, Kelly recovers and pleads for help. Stacy leaves with the surviving twin. Detective Black arrives with the ranger and finds that the wounded twin still has a pulse. The ranger rescues Kelly as Black watches the other girls flee into the woods.

The wounded twin awakes at the hospital and stabs a nurse in the eye with a pen before being subdued. Stacy’s aunt and uncle arrive at Mount Falls as the police begin searching for her and the other twin. The ranger finds the male hippie’s body. Detective Black moves the wounded twin to jail. Maggie Meeker pleads for her release. Local media picks up the story.

Stacy and the other twin bond over their histories of abuse. They hold hands as they walk off into the woods together. Maggie tells the imprisoned twin that her name is Cassie. Cassie attacks her aunt through the cell bars as a photographer startles her by taking pictures.

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Review:

“Visible Scars” is the horror movie equivalent of a precocious toddler indulging in a short attention span.  Imagine a two-year-old bounding around a playroom, changing directions on a whim when the previous destination no longer holds interest.  Or discarding a toy just moments after grabbing it, in favor of something brighter and shinier.  “Visible Scars” bumbles about in a similar fashion, abandoning characters like action figures waiting to be stepped on, and forgetting plotlines when it runs out of ideas for what to do with them next.

To escape her abusive boyfriend, Stacy takes off to the woods for solitude and an opportunity to reflect.  She learns that the area around her uncle’s secluded cabin is reportedly haunted, and has been ever since two girls were kidnapped and their mother murdered there in 1993.  Detective Black, having been retired from the police force for a scant few hours, decides to investigate the cold case of the girls’ disappearance at coincidentally the same time as Stacy’s journey of self-discovery.  Soon, the three stories intertwine for a grisly ghost story of mediocre proportions.

“Visible Scars” is noticeably confused about exactly how to portion out the screentime amongst its three major threads.  The first 20 minutes develop the backstory of the kidnapped twins and their subsequent demise in a tragic house fire that kills their brainwashing captor.  When the total runtime of the movie is only 96 minutes long, 20 minutes spent getting the initial exposition off the ground is a questionable use of real estate.

In its defense, those 20 minutes are the film’s best.  Even with a nearly imperceptible tinge of camp, Tom Sizemore’s homicidal kidnapper sizzles with the actor’s distinct intensity.  His more psychopathic moments are borderline cartoony, yet the icy stare and unspoken threats in between his words give his character a creepy air that is reminiscent of Sizemore’s most memorable roles.  For better or for worse, those 20 minutes are remembered even more fondly when the film plunges into a spiral of increasingly meandering moments.

Eventually the timeline moves to the present day cold case investigation with the recently retired detective.  After the police captain pointlessly discourages pursuit of dead leads for several minutes, Detective Black finds fresh dead ends to jam himself into.  Black enlists a fellow retiree to help perform background checks on several suspects.  They even waste time interviewing one of the uninvolved suspects in a scene that lasts for four sentences before the detectives move along.

The second detective then apparently confuses himself for one of the ghosts and disappears completely, never to be seen or mentioned again.  And he is not the only one.  When the end credits roll and count off the 36 characters featured in the film, there is an overwhelming feeling of having woken from a half-forgotten dream.  It is the kind of dazed state where one vaguely remembers people and details that served little to no purpose before wondering whey they were even there to begin with.

In the mad race to stuff three dozen mostly unnecessary personalities into the plot, character traits are reduced to generic stereotypes tossed out in the movie’s disposable dialogue.  We know that Detective Burke is an old fogey because he cannot keep his contemporary social media applications straight, making reference to something he calls “Facetweety.”  And of course, the granola-eating marijuana farmers in the woods add a shout out to “Burning Man” in case anyone is still unsure about their hippie status.

Much of the production is unconvincing.  The young actresses playing the twin sisters as children wear ridiculous black wigs that would be embarrassing in a Saturday Night Live skit.  Women introduced later in the film that have supposedly lived alone in the woods for 17 years try to sell feral with saucer-eyed stares and clothes artificially tattered by a costume department.

When “Visible Scars” switches its tone to decapitated heads and blades through the throat, the feeling comes full circle that three separate, and only mildly related, stories have been smashed together into one confused film.  Except it is the filmmakers who are confused, and not the audience.  Following the movie is easy.  Understanding why it is structured this way is not.

Just as the brunt of the runtime is misspent, the overall film is misguided.  Somewhere in the soup may have been a coherent horror movie that might have worked as a gorefest, a police procedural, or a ghost story.  Trying to cover all three by trumping up the cast list and weaving in more threads than necessary only makes “Visible Scars” as easy to forget for the audience as two-thirds of the film for its writers.

Review Score:  30

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