Director: Bernard Rose.
Starring: Caitlyn Folley, Ian Duncan, Diana Garcia, Julie Marcus.
Running Time: 85 minutes.
Certificate: 18.
Synopsis: Artist Jill (Caitlyn Folley) and her video maker boyfriend Adam (Ian Duncan) decide to check out an old hospital in Los Angeles to use for an art exhibition. But, after a while the secrets of the hospital start spilling out and soon the couple realise there’s no way out.
Unless you’re a hardcore horror fan and can appreciate the silly fad celebrating cheesy modern films, then SX_TAPE is going to be quite uncomfortable to watch. There needs to be an appreciation for gore, over-sexual dumb couples and the smearing of faeces to enjoy this film and, aside from being insulting and provocative with its idiocy, it is also filled with clichés. Director Bernard Rose and writer Eric Reese use generic women in white dresses, inappropriate and public sex scenes, a hospital, lobotomies, mentally unstable patients and found footage to supposedly scare their audience, but it just doesn’t work.
After THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, horror filmmakers have insisted on the found footage genre. It’s interesting, as is any faux documentary, but it makes you question why someone would insist on using a camera whilst being chased by creatures and seeing their girlfriend getting constant, creepy nosebleeds. Adding to the clichés, the majority of the men in the film are branded as rapists and the lead woman is portrayed as a reckless nymphomaniac. Soon it becomes evident that SX_TAPE doesn’t want to be taken seriously.
SX_TAPE does however succeed in getting a reaction from the audience. The film will have you exclaim, “WTF?!” more than once and succeeds in getting an uncomfortable and uneasy reaction. It also boasts a fairly interesting start, but towards the end things get sloppy when the story of a generic doctor who performs lobotomies and sexual acts on his patients is introduced.
There could have been more scares and intensity if Rose had attempted to make a stronger connection between past and present, and if he had given more insight into Jill’s spiral of insanity he would have created a better film. Instead, the result is stupid artists going into an ancient hospital that isn’t scary in the middle of the day, no matter how old it is. Essentially, the film is about a couple who are stupid enough to go into a deserted hospital and then decide to have sex there, because after all, it’s a film called SX_TAPE and nothing more profound should be expected.
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