Random Acts of Violence

Random Acts of Violence has something to say about the proliferation of torture porn and horror that glorifies violence. Baruchel does it in a smart, sometimes funny, and sometimes utterly devastating way. It’s absolutely worth checking out if you love horror, and maybe even if you don’t.

If it thematically bites off more than it can chew, Random Acts Of Violence is a full-on, visually arresting horror. What it lacks in chills, it makes up for in ambition and style.

On its most superficial horror flick level, Jay Baruchel’s latest directorial effort Random Acts of Violence works

The result is more flashy and shallow than ingenious, let alone terrifying. Yet it’s also a committed effort, one whose energy and style command some appreciation even when they overwhelm the shaky story gist.

For all of its ostensible thoughtfulness, in trying to describe “real art,” Random Acts of Violence ultimately doesn’t describe anything at all.

It’s as random as its title suggests, a genre flick that doesn’t do much more than stumble and angst-out from one killing to the next.

A depressing, cynical slice of nihilism, a movie that thinks it’s saying something about gratuitous violence and exploitation of real tragedy but is even more hypocritically hollow than the films it purports to criticize.