What do you expect from a movie called Hobo With a Shotgun? While it's campy violence certainly makes for some huge laughs, it's sadistic tone tends to be too much for me.
Rutger Hauer is devouring his role (though with perfect teeth, no doubt). It's literally hell on Earth, and the only person out there to stop them is Superman the hobo with a shotgun. The film certainly gives us plenty of motives for why this man is killing, and what would seem deranged is then taken for a sort of heroism. That might be one of the working points of the film, a sort of metaphor for class dynamic and conflict, but that would be a much deeper reading into the film than it ever probably intended.
I appreciate the exploitation throwback to the classic slasher genres, but that still doesn't qualify it as a necessarily good film, not that it ever tries to be more than a B, no more like Z, horror movie. It is a film to be enjoyed on the basis of it's own ridiculousness, much like the hilarious Piranha 3D, but unlike Piranha, this one might leave an unwanted uneasiness in your stomach. If your into that, this totally works as a parody film (fans of this genre will revel in the consistently inventive ways the filmmakers kill of characters), but for me I couldn't get past the incessant grotesque nature, right down to the over-the-top horrific color palette. C-
Rutger Hauer is devouring his role (though with perfect teeth, no doubt). It's literally hell on Earth, and the only person out there to stop them is Superman the hobo with a shotgun. The film certainly gives us plenty of motives for why this man is killing, and what would seem deranged is then taken for a sort of heroism. That might be one of the working points of the film, a sort of metaphor for class dynamic and conflict, but that would be a much deeper reading into the film than it ever probably intended.
I appreciate the exploitation throwback to the classic slasher genres, but that still doesn't qualify it as a necessarily good film, not that it ever tries to be more than a B, no more like Z, horror movie. It is a film to be enjoyed on the basis of it's own ridiculousness, much like the hilarious Piranha 3D, but unlike Piranha, this one might leave an unwanted uneasiness in your stomach. If your into that, this totally works as a parody film (fans of this genre will revel in the consistently inventive ways the filmmakers kill of characters), but for me I couldn't get past the incessant grotesque nature, right down to the over-the-top horrific color palette. C-