Suspended Animation

Suspended Animation (2001): Well, it happened again! I rented this flick expecting an el cheapo horror film and stumbled into a really good suspense/horror story directed by an Oscar-nominated director (John Hancock) and based on a real novel rather than a ‘graphic novel’ upon which far too many movies of today are based. Shot in Indiana (Hancock’s home state), the movie is about a producer of animated movies (hence the hidden meaning in the title) who goes snowmobiling with some buddies and runs into a family straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The lead actor gets a real hint he is in trouble when the family stamps a prime meat butcher’s mark on his forehead. But this is not your average slasher movie and events take an unusual turn fairly early in the flick leading to lots of non-constructive obsessive behavior by the lead character. Things go from bad to better to worse and back several times. The movie has a good story, unknown actors who turn in good performances, and plenty of gore for you low lives out there and you know who you are. The movie is rated R for: brief breastulation, digit excision, forehead drilling, pimple picking, general anti-social behavior, excessive loonies, and for the faulty genes in most of the characters.