The Chaos Experiment

"How bad can it be?" you're asking yourself right now. How about Armand Assante's commanding vocal performance, which is best described as "an impression of Rodney Dangerfield having a severe allergic reaction to the mouthful of broken glass he's chewing on right now?" Perhaps the constant background noise of high-pitched screaming and wailing will tickle your fancy. We've seen enough failed attempts at horror/slasher movies by now to know that when one of the characters is brutally murdered, the emotional response you feel probably isn't supposed to be a wave of overwhelming relief that they finally shut the fuck up. Usually long, awkward silences and 20 minute stretches of nothing but clocks ticking in the background would probably be a bad thing, but in this movie, it's like a sweet healing salve for the ruined movie watcher's soul. Halle-fucking-lujah.

You'll notice that we haven't even touched much on the actual plot yet, mainly because we've been putting off having to remember any of it for as long as humanly possible. If you'll recall, the action revolves around The Blair Witch Sauna, which six people have been lured into by the nefarious Val Kilmer offering a free sauna trip and also $5000 in cash on a dating website. So specifically, the six most gullible people on the entire planet are trapped in the sauna. Christ, a Nigerian crown prince offering to sell you discount Canadian Viagra if you forward his e-mail about Einstein to 10 other people would be better bait than that.

If the abject stupidity hasn't convinced you that each and every one of these assholes needs to die ASAP, their actual personalities and the so-called acting behind them should do the trick:

It's just so hard for us to pick a favorite character, what with Eric Roberts slowly becoming Foghorn Leghorn, a man who is such an incredible guido stereotype that even the Jersey Shore guys would say "this is over the top", and the "neurotic" girl whose deep and nuanced character consists of stretching her eyes to near-anime proportions at all times and pretending she's River Tam. And what cast of unoriginal hackneyed cardboard cutouts would be complete without the stripper who uses the word "fuck" like it's about to be discontinued and takes off her top at the first opportunity?

Let's see, that's four people so far, that just leaves the lady with no distinguishing features, and the guy who bursts into tears because "his wife died nine months ago," then immediately reverses himself and figures "eh, what the hell, I could go for a schvitz". The only thing that could possibly make this gathering of assholes worse would be if they all started going full Rain-Man Hoffman as soon as they realized they were locked in, and then spent the remaining 70 minutes of screen time screaming incoherently at the top of their lungs.

...

...Well, fuck. Thank God we have Phillipe Martinez, who we suspect couldn't direct a car full of stoned college sophomores to the nearest Del Taco, here to make sure all of that happens, but also really fucking orange and with Val Kilmer's disembodied face watching over the proceedings lovingly.

Thus begins a thrilling set of increasingly confusing interrogations by ace detective Armand Assante, who has drawn on all of his inner acting strength and found a way to be even less articulate than David Carradine in Crime Zone. It's a crime that the Academy passed up a masterful performance like this. So Armand threatens to lock Val up for the impending murder of six people who might be locked in a ghost sauna somewhere, except then he thinks they died three months ago, or maybe not, who the fuck knows? Global warming! Chaos in the streets Turkish baths!

Meanwhile, back in the sauna, nobody's lungs have melted, but everyone has worked up a pretty good sweat and gone ever so slightly criminally insane. This leads to the inevitable death by stabbing, death by electrocution, death by rubbing a melted Hershey bar across your own throat, and the ever-popular death by wandering Hobo With a Nailgun. All of this despite the characters being given countless opportunities to just waltz out unharmed with hilarious ease, none of which works because the dipshits who made this movie (such as Philippe Martinez, who we emphasize couldn't direct a pack of hungry wolves towards a Montessori preschool playground with no fencing and limited adult supervision) really, really want it to be Saw.

Anyway, fast forward six or seven disastrously failed attempts at terrible cliche twist endings later, and Total Guido Brain Death is achieved. We can't make heads or tails of the ending(s), but that's mainly because we don't give a shit. The only redeeming quality The Chaos Experiment ever had, and the one shining beacon that kept us going through it all, was Val Kilmer's ever-changing facial expressions. That and his ranting about the 2012 global warming Mayan.com apocalypse meltdown theory (we wish we had made up more than one word of that last sentence.) So bravo, Val, you saved a shitty movie from being utterly unwatchable. Now don't do it again.

– Garrett "Hydrogen" Neil and Sean "Trillaphon" Neil (@trillaphon)