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Everly

0/10

Stars: Salma Hayek, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Laura Cepeda, Togo Igawa, Akie Kotabe, Gabriella Wright, Caroline Chikezie, Jennifer Blanc, Jelena Gavrilovic, Aisha Ayamah

Director: Joe Lynch

At the start, Salma Hayek wakes up stark naked in the bathroom of her grubby apartment where most of the action of this heinous waste of film stock occurs.

If you have been unfortunate enough to have had to take shelter from a thunderstorm or passing tsunami in a cinema showing Everly, the opening scene should be your cue to leave the auditorium, go to the box-office and ask for your money back.

And should they refuse, insist that the manager joins you to watch this unbelievably awful slice of trashy torture porn whose sole bearable (but only just) sequence are the far-too-late-to-save-it end credits.

Yale Hannon’s sordid screenplay for this truly terrible slice of torture porn meets its perfect match in director Joe Lynch who serves up the slew of fetid filth with all the charm of a botched post-mortem.

Once Lynch has satisfied his peeper priorities by following Hayek across her room while she displays the gaudy tattoo that covers her back, the sleazy story kicks in.

Hayek character is a whore who, after suffered four years as a sex slave, is trapped in her apartment selling herself for the financial benefit of her sadistic Yakuza overlord Hiroyuki Watanabe who encourages her to carry on regardless with “Do as you’re told or I’ll kill your mother and daughter”.

And to prove the point, Lynch later adds the five-year-old daughter in question to the increasingly repulsive hash of blood and bullets, slice and slash, sadism and masochism and dissolving faces in acid that marks the film for what it is – poorly contrived mock Taranatino that even Tarantino himself couldn’t do quite as appallingly, however much he wanted to.

Lynch and Hannon add to the charm of their excremental offering by setting the story – which sees Hayek seeking vile violent vengeance against Watanabe and his whores and henchmen – at Christmas, thus allowing him to spice the show with seasonal songs and Christmas carols and having Hayek open her Xmas present and finding a severed head in the gaudily wrapped gift box.

Could it be that British audiences have been specifically catered for by having a dog slaughtered to add nation-specific action to the sordid story?

Unlikely. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the audience Everly hopes to appeal to. I’ve written books on horror films and seen more monstrous movies than I care to recall.

This is the worst I can recall. And that includes Tarantino.

Mind you, it does raise two fascinating questions.

Why the hell did Hayek make it?

And will Channel 4 make it this year's Christmas Day movie?

Alan Frank

USA 2014. UK Distributor: EntertainmentOne. Colour.
92 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 18.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 3, Violence/Horror 3, Drugs 3, Swearing 3.

Review date: 24 Jun 2015