For the uninitiated, there is a subgenre in horror where people put movies that are overly violent or graphic in an excessively cruel manner called “mean spirited” horror. A Serbian Film would be considered by many to be the most worthy of the title considering its vile content but even films like Silent Night Deadly Night have gained this infamous title. A non-horror example of a mean spirited moment would be the unnecessarily cruel death of Zara, the assistant, in Jurrasic World. Parts Unknown not only wears the mean spirited genre like a badge of honor but it wallows in it like a pig in its own waste.

The Van Strasser family has only ever been known for two things, wrestling and being complete maniacs. Removed from the major league and trapped to the dark underbelly of minor wrestling, they are surrounded by drugs and bloodshed. After tragedy befalls the last pure Van Strasser family member, they all find themselves on a path to destruction, with a monster in the swamp at the center of it all. Can anyone stop the darkness that they are helping gain strength, or is the world only a few deaths away from total destruction?

When a movie like Silent Night Deadly Night gets called mean spirited, it is because a mistake in identity leads an innocent man to be shot in front of a group of children. When Parts Unknown gets called mean spirited, it is because it has multiple scenes of needless body mutilation and a cast of disgustingly awful characters. When your film contains graphic suicide, nipple mutilation, a strap on covered in razor blades, and an unborn fetus being pulled from the womb of a pregnant woman, and none of it factors meaningfully into the plot, it simply comes across as cheap shock value from an uninteresting movie.

Films in the past have been full of unsettling scenes and cruel deaths from I Spit on Your Grave to Se7en but there they have a narrative to hang it on and it doesn’t feel like a grouping of disposable characters to be dispatched in the grossest fashion possible. The Van Strasser family is a collection of messed-up characters who are either on drugs, insane, or a combination of both and that is who they are. The problem becomes that Parts Unknown almost glorifies the characters, killing off every good or less awful character so we can continue the plot with the vile ones.

Mean spirited films have never been a subgenre for everyone, some of the more accessible ones have good stories, interesting characters, or at least a just desserts for the awful people involved. I can’t say that there is anyone I could every recommend Parts Unknown to. It is nothing short of being a vile, tasteless, waste of time that has not a single redeeming quality about it. If I a gun to my head and was asked to say one positive thing it would be that the lighting was great, every despicable scene of senseless violence and cruelty was lit beautifully by Denez McAdoo.

0 out of 10