There are some movies that instantly let you know everything you need based on nothing but the title alone, but even at that it would be a fairly hefty understatement to say this year’s Beaten to Death delivers on its promise of wanton violence and wince-inducing carnage.
It’s a cut above your typical B-grade gorefest, though, with the film holding a respectable 70 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, even if the overriding consensus is that it isn’t one for the faint of heart, which should have been made abundantly clear from the nomenclature alone.
Harking back to the glory days of the “stranger trapped in the wilderness” subgenre that was everywhere you looked once upon a time, the story finds a man stranded in the middle of nowhere after surviving a frenzied and blood-soaked assault, leaving him at the mercy of backwoods psychopaths and would-be murderers as he mounts a desperate attempt to escape with his life fully intact.
Suffice to say, if you’re even the least beat squeamish then Beaten to Death is not the feature for you, but there are apparently a lot of people out there willing to strap in and go along for the ride after FlixPatrol named the unhinged rampage of stomach-churning brutality as the number one most-watched title on Vudu following its recent digital and on-demand debut.
Some folks are just absolute gluttons for monstrous punishment, and if you can make it all the way through Beaten to Death without flinching at least one, then a pat on the back is well-deserved.