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After much hype and a long road, I finally found my way to a copy of the Soska Sisters’ inaugural film, Dead Hooker in a Trunk. You’ve all seen it by now, so this review might be moot. But I’m writing it anyway.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk is an everyday cautionary tale of four messed up friends drawn into a world of violence and pain when they wake up from a wild night of partying to find the corpse of a sex worker in the boot of their car. I bet you didn’t pick that up from the title. It does go a little deeper than that, but you get the gist of it.

Clearly made with very little money and shot digitally, the look of Dead Hooker is incredibly cheap. Compound that with some shaky camerawork and dodgy editing, and we’re entering the kind of territory that might have a lot of movie watchers reaching for that remote. If you can get passed some of the visual problems, there is a lot to like about this film.

I’m going to go ahead and assume this film was shot in sequence, because everyone seems to get better as it goes on. The actors and camerawork both improve as the running time mounts up. The characters are deliberately designed to be versions of one-note archetypes, but they all seem to have a little more going on below the surface. They work well too. Obviously they make some pretty stupid decisions, but that’s just the burden of horror and cult films.

The real star of this flick is its “I don’t give a fuck” attitude, which runs through every frame like a junkie Usain Bolt. It just oozes so much cool that you might find a puddle of melted sunglasses under your DVD player. It almost feels like the film Tarantino might make in his late teens. Dead Hooker has a lot of Quentin’s influence. Even though it clearly harkens back to the exploitative 70s, Dead Hooker does so through what I would call “A Prism of Tarantino”. You guys know what I mean, right?

Dead Hooker in a Trunk wears its low budget as a badge of pride, and overall manages to be a cool, interesting movie in spite of its problems. It’s crudely made, violent and brilliant. It’s an easy recommend for people who like their movies gritty and badass, with plenty of ass-kicking women.

Rating: 6/10

Taken From:
gorepress.com