Review for Senseless

Worst Film EVER!
No, I'm not kidding, compared to this film, Battlefield Earth is a masterpiece! I am shocked by Senseless and cannot fathom who exactly this film is actually for. I was left stunned by the awful and (excuse the pun) senseless waste of my time this film was.
Senseless, based on a novel by Stona Fitch, tells the story of a man Eliott Gast (Jason Behr) who is kidnapped and held in a room by his kidnappers. He assumes they are terrorists and when you listen to their leader's inane ramblings about 'American Capitalism' you can understand why. He is being watched by a number of cameras which he assumes is just surveillance, until it is revealed he is part of a 'Big Brother-style' show that is broadcasting his predicament throughout the world. Now we never see this audience and so when he refers to them who are judging and voting for what should happen to him you have no idea whether these people are terrorists themselves or just really sick people.
At first, the film appears to be just a kidnap and ransom film, until he is forced to endure a number of horrifying tortures to take away Gast's senses one by one (Taste, Smell, Touch, Hearing and then finally Sight). I won't reveal how they do this, but one of them involves a coffee spoon. It is this torture that takes the film out of the interesting into the sickening and what is worse is that there are no reasons given as to why Gast was targeted. None. We see flashbacks of his childhood where he was thoroughly horrible and also to his wife and the dinners he has had impressing clients and so on. However, unlike the Saw films in which they made you think 'Ah, so that is why this is happening to you', these didn't and in fact added nothing to the film. By the end you are stunned not by what is happening to the character, but whether you actually care and his attempts to get himself killed make you wish he succeeded so the film would end.
I hated this film. Hated every moment of it. And the reason is not the graphic violence; it's not the feeling in my gut that 'This could actually happen'. No, it is because this film was so boring and pointless. It seems that horror filmmakers these days think that in order to create a scary movie you either need a clever concept (such as The Human Centipede) or masses of gore that makes you sick to your stomach (like Hostel). This film has neither. If we saw the audience who were watching, much like we did in The Condemned, then we could understand why this was happening and the people behind it. Even if we saw a few scenes with the captors to show their indifference or some evidence that they have done this before. None of this is done and by the end you don't so much feel relief for the character, but for yourself as you no longer have to watch and unlike other films of this nature in which the ending was what made you go 'Oh My God' (Saw and Paranormal Activity come to mind) this film just ends. The ending itself is just so stupid that you have to wonder what writer/director Simon Hynd had in mind and what he wanted to achieve. Was it to make us appreciate our senses? What was it? By the end I didn't know and really didn't care.
I never usually comment on the visual and audio of a film, but I really need to comment on the audio of this film. Which is awful. It seems the actors were told to whispers or mutter their lines really quietly to the point I actually had to put my volume up to 40 (usually at around 10-15) and then a few moments later it was followed by loud blood curdling screaming that nearly blew me away. This would not be so bad if subtitles were available… but they are not. Considering the nonsensical ramblings of the lead torturer, you would have thought even the option to have subtitles would have made the film a bit more bearable. Not a lot, but a bit.
Special Features include an awful commentary by Hynd that makes me wonder whether he thinks he was making Citizen Kane, because he sure sounds like he did. He is full of stories about the creation of the film, but really needed one of the stars or producers to back up his ramblings. Deleted scenes are mainly just nine minutes of extended footage and don't really add anything to the film. A minute of outtakes seem to be just props falling out or going awry and considering the nature of the film I don't really think this should have been included, unless it was to go 'Hey look, it's just a film!' The inclusion of Hynd's short film Virus was a nice touch, just a shame it is more or less a rip-off of The Ring and didn't exactly make much sense, but then I wouldn't have expected anything less from him.
Senseless is a film I would recommend to no one. I cannot imagine the kind of person who would get any pleasure of it. The acting by everyone is awful; the characters are two dimensional and the entire story is a mess. The whole film was just a senseless waste of my time.