Dismal: Eat or Be Eaten (Review)

Dismal: Eat or Be Eaten

Dismal: Eat or Be Eaten (2008)

Directed by Gary King

What kind of rating do you give to a movie that falls into it's so bad, it's good enough to be MST3K-ed and thus makes it funny enough to watch?

1 and half spinkicks? 2 spins? 2 and half?

Because that's how I felt about how I had to rate Dismal.

You'll see what I gave it at the end of this review.

Dismal: Eat or be Eaten is like a Dharma Initiative can labeled "HORROR MOVIE (WITH EXTRA CANNIBALS)".

It's so cliched, so generic, so assembly line produced, that it would have been tossed into the used DVD bin and be lost forever. Thank goodness the DVD I got was free.

Dismal is mix of Hatchet and the Hills Have Eyes. You've seen it all before. If it looks and tastes like canned peas. It's fuckin peas.

But what happens when instead of you seeing all green peas, they made some red peas, or blue peas or yellow peas. Wouldn't you chuckle just a little bit? Seeing M&M peas would make laugh.

And that's why as I watched I went all Tom Servo and Crow on this mess of a flick and it actually made this hilariously decent.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

What does a girl have to do to pass science class? Stay alive!

Dana can’t afford to fail, so she goes on a field trip with other college students
to the Great Dismal Swamp. While Dana and her tasty friends are looking for extra credit, terrifying swamp cannibals are looking for dinner.

Eat or be eaten!

Horror is served hot and steamy with a side order of sick in DISMAL.

Awesome Review-O-Matic

The simple cliched review is to do the pun on words and say Dismal was absolutely dismal. But it actually wasn't. The production value is highly low but the film itself was filled with some nice visuals, hot looking hotties and some mean looking makeup effects.

The CGI special effects on the other hand were hilariously bad. So bad I was cracking up at the sight of them. But we'll get to that in sec.

So for this review, we'll use the checklist I used for my review of Hatchet.

Below is a list of what we here at the jaded viewer deem as full of chunky gooeyness when it comes to the ingredients of a solid slasher-palooza.

Does Dismal achieve everything on this list?

1.) A mysterious, insanely strong, ridiculed as a child, deformed, inbred redneck slasher.

Check. (plus he has a undercover papa whose equally fucked up)

2.) Gratuitous, over the top, super fleshy nudity (with Grade A boobage)?

Check.

3.) Stereotypical teenage caricatures who die gruesome and horrific over the top deaths?

Check.

3a.) Are you telling me there's a brunette kick ass final girl, a blonde bimbo, a nerdy kid, a slutty whore and a token black guy?

Yes. I mean check.

4.) No Plot?

Check.

5.) Kills by our slasher that make you go "Fuck yeah!"

Semi check. (Well they didn't make me go "Fuck yeah", more like "HAHAHAHAHHA. That's fuckin funny")

6.) Gore, lots of it. Like serious decapitation, dismemberment, impalement, hatchet frenzy steroid rages and blood shooting out at various penetration wounds, limbs a flailing and mindless splatter and mayhem

Semi check.

OK here is where the death scenes become uber ridiculous as most of our kills are done with really bad CGI. I mean these were done on like Windows 98 using Paint.

1.) Token black guy gets "hooked" in the mouth.
2.) Slutty whore gets her feet "bear trapped" off (yet she doesn't scream?) and then gets her face bear trapped.
3.) Blonde bimbo gets steel wired sliced in half (the CGI on this is soooooo fuckin bad that I was literally on the floor laughing uncontrollably)
4.) Nerdy guy gets his arm cut off

7.) Geeky leader who takes charge of the hapless group as they try to escape who befriends a hot girl who knows about the "legend" (there's always a legend no one believes)

Semi check. (Hot girl actually doesn't know about the legend)

8.) Funny yet ill timed dialogue but also various quips and one liners that are funny only the first time around (yet somehow funny again when you buy the DVD and only when you're stoned)

Check. (But this movie is probably way awesomer when your stoned)

9.) Final girl goes all final girly?

Check.

10.) Wildly ambigious ending that can be used to warrant a sequel?

Check.

As I keep saying it's all generic. You know, couple has sex, they die. A run and trip girl gets caught in a highly complicated trap that no way a inbred redneck could possibly devise and dies. Random twist inserted for no reason whatsover.

I did mention the CGI was hilariously bad right? There are two scenes that make this milk coming out of your nose funny. One is a shotgun blast by our final girl where you see CGI blood oozing out from the fake CGI hole of our would be redneck slasher. The other scene is a supposed explosion of a cabin. The CGI fire and explosion look so fake, it's like they put a lighter in front of the camera.

But the filmmakers had to know it would look cheesy. So I'm gonna take it as such. And this is why Dismal will get 2 spinkicks. 1 spinkick for following generic slasher cliches with gratuitous nudity and 1 spinkick for the extra, would you like more Velveeta cheesy CGI effects.

Dismal is Hatchet's handicapped little brother who has a speech impediment. It does what it set out to do. Be funny, entertaining and outright ridiculous.

And peas, even deformed, colorful M&M peas taste good.

Gore-ipedia (if you want to be shocked don't read)

Token black guy gets "hooked" in the mouth
Slutty whore gets her feet "bear trapped" off and then gets her face bear trapped
Blonde bimbo gets steel wired sliced in half
Nerdy guy gets his arm cut off
Horrible CGI gunshot to the stomach
Burnt beyond recog
Slice and stab
Human Heart
Wooden spike death

Nude-ipedia (because you like boobies)

Slutty whore boobs and ass
Lots of belly skin

WTF moment

The really fake looking slice and dice death scene of blonde bimbo

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

This is not a good movie by any means. But what happens when the movie is so bad, that you start to enjoy it because it's unintentionally funny. The "It's so bad, it's good" category of horror movies is very hard to rate. The first one that comes to mind is Snakes on a Plane which I ranked as #7 on my Top Horror Movies of 2006.

So after much thought, Dismal warrants 2 spinkicks. It's too bad MSt3K is gone and couldn't get their hands on this flick. Tom Servo and Crow would have a total field day on Dismal.

Rating:

The Trailer





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dismal, dismal trailer , dismal review , horror movies of 2008, dismal eat or be eaten, dismal eat or be eaten review, fearmakers, bloody violence, top gore movies, slasher movies,gratuitous nudity,

Categories: american horror, dismal eat or be eaten, dismal review, dismal trailer, gore, gratuitous nudity, hatchet, slasher films, splatter, splatter gore