By: Ryan Dailey
Life is full of disappointments. Receiving a pack of socks for Christmas instead of the NES Action Set with Super Mario/Duck Hunt. Waiting to become the legal age to get into a bar, only to find it is full of alcoholics with anger issues and broken single mothers looking for a step dad for her litter. And finally, The Retaliators.
The Retaliators watches like the script was written on an Apple iMac G3 by a 13 year-old in 2005, clad in Tripp pants, surrounded by posters of Tarintino movies.
Written by brothers Darren and Allen Geare, The Retaliators is a revenge movie that tries hard to be a horror film and steals beats from films like SAW and even the Paul Walker classic, Running Scared.
Micheal Lombardi plays Pastor Bishop, a man with two daughters, Sarah (Katie Klley) and Rebecca (Abbey Hafer). Sarah is murdered by Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt), sending the good pastor looking for answers that leads him on a blood soaked trek of revenge.
The plot sounds great on paper and there are many classic films about revenge, I Spit on Your Grave at the front of the pack. The film had promise, the casting was on point for the most part, until the filmmakers cast every member of Five Finger Death Punch and Jacoby Shaddix from Papa Roach and they even threw Tommy Lee in the mix, hence the analogy at the beginning of the review. The performances from the musicians are just stilted and awkward.
The soundtrack, however, is a loving homage to soundtracks of the 80’s, even going so far as to have the title of the movie repeated over and over on the main track.
The film comes from a place of love and trauma, as it is based on Geare brothers sister surviving an assault in 2004. In a world of trigger-free media and diluted “elevated” horror, this film is a nice and gritty change of pace. While it was not necessarily this reviewer’s The Last House on the Left or Hard Candy, The Retaliators could be some one’s Kill Bill or The Professional.
Two and a half out of five
The Retaliators is available digitally and on physical media now.