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For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

CRUEL WORLD is a very silly little comedy horror film made on an indie budget. The setting is a mansion in the Hollywood hills, where a typically maladjusted Edward Furlong (yep, the kid from TERMINATOR 2) takes a bunch of airheads hostage and forces them to play in his deadly game show. The acting is very cheesy and the story non-existent; just endless bikini beauties paraded around mixed with the occasional disappointing gore scene. Pity Furlong - who I like - for being reduced to this level.

Edward Furlong reaches critical mass in this roll, which is buttered with gargantuan heaviness. Though the story is famished for what anyone might term logical structure, Mr. Furlong seems hungry to chew his way through every scene. Some might think he's becoming too big for such movies, squeezing into them like 5-pounds of marbled pork in a two-pound sausage casing. But I think he's a dollop of awesome; a soupçon of superb; and the thick, calorie-laden icing on what might otherwise be a rather slender cinematic cake. It doesn't matter that the director seems to have "written" this while shooting it, nor that the film runs out without any explicable ending. It has the enormous talent of Edward Furlong, who feasts on the meager dramatic opportunities as if they were a banquet.

Disposable twenty-somethings, each a stereotypical self-absorbed kid with designs on winning a cool million on this reality show which is a cross between Survivor and Real World, find themselves in quite the dilemma:the producer of the show they represent is a deranged sicko, his psychopathy a result of his dismissal on a "Bachellorette" type of reality show, using his equally nutty brother, who hangs on his every command, to carry out a massacre, because you see once a contestant is eliminated or "voted off", they really are ELIMINATED.The film's sole novelty is seeing Edward Furlong as the nutcase producer, who opens the film stalking Jaime Pressly(..I guess she was friends with the director or something, stopping by because she owed him a favor, I guess), successful in getting revenge for how she duped him in front of millions of viewers for another. Furlong sits in this room, watching monitors placed throughout the mansion and it's grounds, his voice barking orders and teases to the contestants, before and after they discover what happens once you are a loser.The games become more and more clever and violent as times goes by(..not enough to satisfy, however), the remaining survivors trying to form a plan to escape their unfortunate predicament. The cast chosen are all attractive, with athletic, toned bodies, their attitudes and mores appropriate for each stock character, represented by the actors / actresses without a hint of depth..they are designed specifically one-dimensional, representing the hunky bad boy, hick cowboy, Latina chick with an attitude, gay and slightly chubby goofball, shy Asian girl with martial arts skills, black intellectual(..his dialogue, particularly when he speaks "scholarly" is as artificial as it gets), hot beach bunny who comes from money and is easy to seduce, etc.Don't worry, the film also provides the viewer with the token blonde "final girl" in Laura Ramsey(..one of the new horror "it girls", having starred in such recent flicks as "The Covenant", "Venom", and "The Ruins") so that all the slasher guidelines are fulfilled. The violence is tame(..the usual beheading, followed by the head roll down a hill, an arm taken off, finger hacked away, all presented in such a way that look completely underwhelming) and I think one can tell that most of the money went to Furlong instead of proper make-up effects trumping our desire to see these characters die in a properly horrible manner. We aren't even given any nudity as I guess these girls were too prudish to bother flashing us some skin for burdening ourselves through this crap. The film's goal is obvious..a black comic parody on reality programming, and using the slasher template as a means to kill off these greedy partyers who enjoy the lavish location before terror descends upon them. Furlong is often remarking to himself, inside his "headquarters" regarding what his future victims discuss with themselves, and his character, devilish grin intact, peeps on the sexual(..and bathroom) activities of the females. The reactions of the characters as they are terrorized might amuse, since I'm sure many of us have fantasized, in times past, the demise of these immature reality show types who back-stab and bemoan each other for financial gain or if just for the hell of it. Susan Ward is your eye candy for the movie, the sex pot who gets a little "off the top" when she attempts to escape from the grounds. A constant is near-escapes and how Furlong, time and again, prevails to stop them in the nick of time. Daniel Franzese is Furlong's unstable, mentally handicapped and easily manipulative brother Claude. Another movie pointing out poor Furlong's faltering career.

Dear movie-goers, How I wish somebody had warned me not to watch this movie... That's why I'm trying to do the same for you. DON'T watch it. It's sooo bad you won't believe, without even being bad enough for you to laugh at it. It's really a movie that insults any possible gray-cell you have. I watched it at a Movie Festival in Portugal, FANTASPORTO, a Festival specialized in horror-sci-fi-alternative movies, therefore you could be expecting almost anything from the selection of movies. But this one is just a plain teenage slashing movie, and just so that you won't think that my appreciation of the movie is due to my general taste in movies, I can tell you that compared to any "I know what you did last Summer", or "Halloween", or such, those movies are works of pure cinematic art compared to "Cruel World". I'm sorry if I'm not being very clear about why I didn't like it, but I wouldn't know where to start: could it be because there is not a drop of originality whatever? No plot? Because the actors suck? Because the director has no idea of the difference between a movie and a cucumber salad? Or maybe the totally misplaced soundtrack? I don't know... Edward Furlong, what happened to you?