Freakdog (2008) Review

 

Summary (No Spoilers):

Freakdog (2008), also known as Red Mist, is about a group of med students accidentally killing one of their own. When he slips into a coma, strange murders start to occur.

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In-Depth Review (Spoilers Ahead!):

 

The movie begins with a mentally disturbed man taking a strange and inappropriate video of a woman's dead body. He's apparently traumatized by his sex worker mother's death, and self-harms in the morgue. That is so unsanitary.

Then it moves on to a group of med students doing a mock surgery, and when they finish their work, the women are talking in the locker room where they all decide to go to a party with some friends.

The man from the morgue is recording their chat on his phone camera, and the women seem to dislike him, which is fair enough since he's apparently spying on them. His name is apparently Kenneth, and he seems obsessed with the main girl Katherine. 

Kenneth seems to be mentally disabled based on his form of speech, and he seems to be unaware of his own social missteps, but it is an uncomfortably offensive portrayal throughout the movie.

The friend group is partying in a bar, introducing all of the characters, including the four women and three men (Katherine, Kim, Harriet, Yoshimi, Jake, Sean, Steve).

Kenneth interrupts to ask Katherine if he can walk her home, and he's met with bullying and their frankly middle school level insult of "Freakdog," because apparently when they aren't training to be doctors, they start to act like they're 12. 

Kenneth reacts poorly and reveals he recorded an interaction between Sean and a pharmacist who gave him drugs. This freaks the group out, as they'll lose their spot as med students if that information comes out.

The group invites him to party with them, and though Katherine tries to stop Sean as Kenneth seems satisfied with that, Sean is apparently a piece of shit because he decides to try to drown Kenneth in alcohol in some fucked up drinking game. And then just to make it clear how immature they all are, Sean pantses Kenneth and reveals his self-harm to everyone at the party.

Kenneth flips out, and thanks to Harriet using a strobe effect as she DJs, he is induced into a seizure. He isn't breathing when he collapses, so half the group tries to trach him and the other half fights on it, saying it'll be too obvious they are involved.

 

 

Clearly inspired by I Know What You Did Last Summer, the group argues about how they'll be in trouble with all the drugs and alcohol in Kenneth, and even dropping him off at the ER will put them in danger, which is seriously ridiculous.

They argue for far too long, and then they load Kenneth up into their car and literally dump him out of the car onto the ground outside the ER. It's an act of cruelty, and really shows a lack of remorse.

That lack of remorse remains when Katherine informs the group Kenneth is in a coma because his brain was deprived of oxygen too long. Katherine tries to get the group to confess to putting a man in a coma, but no one else will budge.

Katherine becomes obsessed with trying to save Kenneth, likely out of her massive guilt, and starts using an untested drug combination with a 40% chance of success into Kenneth. He almost dies, and Katherine storms out, but she doesn't notice his brain waves picking up.

Shortly after, Yoshimi is trying to apologize to Katherine. And then out of nowhere the nice janitor attacks Yoshimi and bashes her head in with the car door.

But it isn't actually the janitor. Kenneth now has some kind of Carrie powers that let him travel outside of his body and possess people to take his revenge. It's cheesy but almost cool.

Next to die is asshole Sean, his death inflicted on him by possessed receptionist Shelby as she funnels acid down his throat.

Katherine tries and fails to get anyone to believe her that it's Kenneth and her meds did it to him. It's understandable because it sounds absolutely ridiculous when she tries.

Harriet dies next, bled out in her bathtub with the name Freakdog written in blood over her body. It's a pretty brutal death, but why are they trying so hard with this lame Freakdog insult?

 

 

Katherine tries to pull the plug on Kenneth, but he possesses her and she blacks out, waking up half-naked in the woods and looking like a filthy mess. She runs off to try to save Kim.

Steve, at home with his family, wakes up to the baby monitor whispering "Freakdog," which is major cheese, and then he steps out to his wife holding the baby and standing at the stairs. She turns, stabs him, pushes him down the stairs... and then wipes the blood off on the baby blanket, which is admittedly hilarious.

Kim, now possessed by Kenneth, cuts herself a bloody mess and walks out into a party in full swing naked and covered in blood. This treatment of women isn't shocking because Kenneth definitely is gross about women. 

 

 

 

Kim continues to hurt herself, even when Katherine arrives and tries to save her, but strobe lights flash and the control is shaken.

As medics arrive to treat Kim, Katherine ends up arrested and accused of murdering Jake, shown on video as doing so in the time where Katherine was unconscious. She manages to escape and heads to the hospital.

At the hospital, Katherine grabs a machine and plugs it in when in Kenneth's room, beginning an incredibly painful strobing section that was painful to watch, and she uses that moment of weakness to pull the plug and choke Kenneth to death, but Kenneth possesses a doctor who tries to choke the life out of Katherine in return.

Katherine retaliates by reaching for shock paddles and slamming them into the doctor's head, killing that man unnecessarily because she could've reached further down with those things for sure!

A police officer heads in to arrest her, and it becomes clear Kim survived when she visits an addled Katherine in a mental institution.

The last scene has Katherine's nose dripping blood, signifying Kenneth is possessing her.

This movie was fun for the kill scenes, which were interesting and done well, and it might be worth it for those interested in watching through the early film careers of Arielle Kebbel and Katie McGrath, but the plot is not very original, a lot of the movie is needlessly offensive, and the movie lacks severely in budget, including an awful inverted intro shot out of a car window and a typo in the credits.

Based on all of these reasons, I give the movie a 3.5/5 rating for the fun and creative kills.