The Basement – Yeti

                The Basement tells the story of Craig, a man who leaves his beautiful wife at their huge house, jumps in his expensive car, and heads down to the liquor store to grab a bottle of wine. What he actually gets is kidnapped by Bill and taken to his torture dungeon. Turns out that Bill goes by the name “The Gemini Killer” and likes to put his victims in his role and then play different roles to act out his own capture, conviction, torture, and death. Oh, also, he cuts folks heads off with a goddamned acetylene torch, y’all. A fuckin cutting torch. Yeah. The man makes people sit through his one man show and then burns their heads off. Things are just looking all kinds of bad for Craig.

                For the bulk of The Basement’s runtime, it is focused solely on Craig and Bill in the basement. Every now and then it switches back to his wife and her friend who decide that Craig is probably out getting some strange. To her credit, she does try to file a missing person report and calls around to check and see if he’s locked up or in the hospital. Most of the time, though, you’re right there with the fellas in the basement. Thankfully, those two put on some great performances. The performances in this movie are all pretty solid but Jackson Davis and Cayleb Long shine as Bill and Craig.

                Really I can’t think of any major problems I had with this movie. It is one of those that doesn’t fully make sense until the end. They tie up all the ends neatly and answer all the questions that you’re left with. The pacing is good and there is never really a lull in the movie. The practical effects used are pretty good.  The writing was great as well. If you can make a torch wielding madman who makes people sit through his one man show before cutting their heads with fire a sympathetic character, that’s some good writing. I guess my only complaint was the CGI but it was like ten seconds or so and it definitely wasn’t bad enough to take me out of the moment.

                This one may not be for everyone. They touch on some subjects that are dark enough that they overshadow the constant physical and psychological torture for a few minutes. Shit so dark that you kind of start to feel bad for Bill on some level. If you’re okay with hearing about some pretty fucked up childhood trauma , though, it should be fine.

                All in all, would I recommend this movie? Yeah man. I would definitely suggest giving it a watch. It’s a solid indie film that builds up to a couple of really nice twists that you won’t see coming.