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Overall Rating : 4.5/10
Directed By : Mark Jones
Rocky Marquette (Shallow Ground)
Paydin LoPachin (Shark Swarm)
Katie Chonacas (Killer Pad)
Bruce Weitz
Supplied By : Dimension Films
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : July. 1, 2008
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| PLOT When two teen orphans--Norbert, a ventriloquist mute who talks through his dummy, and Angelica, his psychotic sister-hit the road for Vegas, Norbert's dummy develops a murderous life of his own. With the cops on their trail and the corpses piling up, this homicidal trio can't be stopped as they cut a path of death and destruction across the country. Creepy, gruesome and hilariously twisted, Triloquist is campy horror at its perverse best. |
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| THE REVIEW In TRILOQUIST, all life has consisted of for siblings Angela and Norbit is life on the road with their junkie Ventriloquist mother. When their mother commits suicide(via overdose), the kid's along with the dummy(who is appropriately name "Dummy"), are forced to live with an abusive uncle whom molests Angelina eventually. Did I mention that this puppet has an evil mind of it's own? Well....he does and after witnessing the abuse for for too long, "Dummy" kills the no good uncle. We flash-dorward and it is sometimes later, in which the kids are all grown up - Norbert, a quiet mute who seems to let the dummy do his talking, as for Angelina? She's just a little psycho!. After an altercation with a couple of Trick or Treaters, Norbit is sent to a hospital(although it was the puppet that was responsible for it all). It isn't long before Angelina and Dummy "spring" Norbit out. The 3 hit the road embarking on a trip to Las Vegas, while on their way, they also go on a little killing spree, and kidnap a young woman that Angelina hopes that Norbit can impregnate - to what shat she refers to continuing their bloodline. The Writer/Director of TRILOQUIST, as struck it big with his other films that display unlikely villains such as the title characters in LEPRECHAUN and RUMPELSTILTSKIN. With TRILOQUIST he brings us another pint-size unlikely in the form of a Ventriloquist dummy, who is generically referred to as Dummy. Dummy a puppet that' alive and well on his own, with an intelligent mind intact - unfortunately, most of the thoughts that run though that mind are pure evil. With him he has a pair of siblings, who have had the dummy all of their lives as Dummy was originally a part of their mother's old Triloquist act. With her now dead, the siblings hope to head to Vegas, where it would be the mute Norbit who would resume the Ventriloquist act there. In Vegas, I guess they were planning to pass off the act as a legit one, saying that Norbit is the one actually orchestrating the act.....but the reality is that for the most part Dummy speaks for him. A bond between Norbit and Dummy is revealed later in the film that had all kinds of plot holes in my opinion, and by time the film ends, you are left with only half knowing what it's all about. TRILOQUIST plays out as part serial killer thriller and part Horror Comedy....as it's story progressed it began to remind me of a film like NATURAL BORN KILLERS. The film also has the crude language of other film's of the like; Jones' own LEPRECHAUN, and of course probably the film that started it all for films of this kind of gimmick(at least, the one that popularized it.)...CHILD'S PLAY, but that's just about all TRILOQUIST has. The story is there, but it's weak in it's foundation and lacks the solid plot that Jones gave to LEPRECHAUN. Not only was that a lot more funnier and wittier, it also was built on a good story (obviously since the original warranted 5 sequels afterward). The film overall is a bit uneven, as the film stats slow, then gets better, only to sink down again. For the majority of the time I was watching this, I couldn't help but feel that it had a really dull feeling, and it didn't really help the cause, since most of the killings happen off screen, mostly beginning with a screen fading to black. When we come back after the brief blackout, the deed has already been done, and we're lucky if we even get a bloody camera shot of the victim. the acting here is fairly decent for this kind of material, as most of the time the acting is not great in these types of films...at least in my opinion anyway. Before seeing this, I wasn't quite sure about the chemistry between Rocky Marquette(Norbit) and Paydin LoPachin, but they did a good job in making their performances as twisted siblings believable. Rocky Marquette deserved more credit because without saying a world through out almost the whole film, he was able to make his character believable, and make it work using facial expressions and other body language. Overall, TRILOQUIST is a film that tries to cash in what little may be left in the killer doll/puppet genre, but unfortunately it fails to create the great Horror film some of the other films have created. In my opinion, TRILOQUIST has a feel that feels a little too safe, sure it does have the language, the innuendos, and yes, this one even has incest but you get the sense that it has some boundaries to it, because. truly. the film's violence and gore seems a bit "made for TV" safe. |
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| GORE
METER 2/10 Not gory at all, as I said it happens mostly off screen. Among the instances that we do see are, severed fingers a strangulation and a bashing with a club. |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 4/10 A mix between Folk- Rock and Hip-Hop...it was ok. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM TRILOQUIST for me, was a disappointment. Coming from Writer/Director Mark Jones, I expected a LEPRECHAUN caliber film, but instead TRilOQUIST is a rather bland rehash of the old idea, put in a new less interesting story. It's definitely not the best, but surely it's not the worse. Those expecting a gory film because it comes from DIMENSION EXTREME, might be disappointed, because TRILOQUIST is actually pretty tame. |
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