The core audience this film is aimed at will find the cruelty doled out by Sadie rather satisfying…
Scorned is directed by prolific screenplay writer Mark Jones, who co-wrote Scorned with actress Sadie Katz (House of Bad), with this being her first foray into writing. Jones appears to take a break from directing every few years with his last effort, the bizarre horror-comedy, Triloquist back in 2008, and in 1993 he was responsible for the awful Leprechaun, a rather lame horror starring a soon to be famous only a year later, Jennifer Aniston, thanks to the hugely popular TV series, Friends, which first aired on September 1994.
Leprechaun spawned several horrors bearing the name in the titles and each were pretty bad, to put it mildly. Scorned is definitely a step up for B movie master Jones, and I suspect Sadie Katz’s input may have helped in that regard as the film had some nice twists of the sort Jones isn’t exactly famous for.
- Scorned
- Directed by
Mark Jones - Cast
AnnaLynne McCord, Billy Zane, Viva Bianca, Brooklynn Brokaw, Doug Drucker - Release Date
4 February 2014 - Nav’s Grade: C+
Scorned is about a woman, Sadie (AnnaLynne McCord), who discovers her boyfriend, Kevin (Billy Zane) is cheating on her with her best friend Jennifer (Viva Bianca), after she finds sexy text messages on Kevin’s cellphone passed back and forth to he and Jennifer. The thing is, Sadie is mentally unstable thanks to abuse and electric shock treatment in a mental institution when she was young, leaving her scarred for life, and insane.
Sadie gets back at the lovers by tying them up and torturing them in various ways, including using a vice to crush fingers, some dental work with a wrench and explaining then demonstrating to her cheating boyfriend what Kathy Bates does to James Caan in the Stephen King classic, Misery. Without giving more away, she subjects the pair to some very cruel and painful to watch punishment, all the while having flashbacks of her own childhood torture, but to make things more interesting, an escaped convict is on the loose and eventually bumps into Sadie, but don’t expect the obvious because there are enough twists in the tale to keep it from being just another, hell hath no fury, predictable revenge flick, although, it did border on it more often than not.
*****
AnnaLynne McCord was the clear star of Scorned but she didn’t really have much in the way of competition as the others were tied up. I watched McCord in the brilliantly weird Excision in 2012, where she gave a great performance, showing she really knew her stuff, and while she did a fantastic job here, it wasn’t anywhere near the same quality. What this horror/thriller needed was some touches of comedy as I felt the material had McCord act almost whacky enough to easily get away with it and would have made this a much better viewing experience for the audience.
The core audience this film is aimed at will find the cruelty doled out by Sadie rather satisfying and the way the film winks at us at the end, with a promise of more to come, great news but I’m just not sure the rest will appreciate the torture scenes and the imperfections, of which there are a few, to their liking. I was quite impressed with the way Jones spent his $1.7 million in this low-budget indie as the production values were reasonable and the cast were more than able. Billy Zane and Viva Bianca performed well considering they spent most of the film tied up but they put on good performances. This film is labeled a thriller but it’s clearly more horror than thriller so keep that in mind before deciding to watch Scorned. If you like horror then you’ll no doubt like Scorned. Recommended.
by Nav Qateel
