Alyce Kills (2013)

Excellent but underrated film

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I went into this movie with absolutely no expectations, so I ended up being very pleasantly surprised with the overall movie after I had watched it. Twisted, dark and gritty; Alyce tells the story of a young woman whose life takes a downwards spiral after her friend falls off the roof of her apartment and is left seriously injured. This movie only used blood and gore towards the end to create that kind of "shock factor" that horror fans just love. Apart from the last thirty minutes, the movie is mostly atmospheric and moody, which makes Alyce's descent into madness all the more terrifying. This is a must see for fans of the horror genre and anyone who is looking for a strange and original twist on Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland."

This was a pointless, trivial pursuit into the depths of boredom, disgust and degradation. Just about every character was vile and disgusting. There was no one to root for. And Alyce was the most unlikable of all. She was ugly, nasty and her actions made zero sense. And on top of that, this horror flick didn't get to the horror part until the last few minutes of the film. Nothing made any sense. I mean *SPOILER ALERT* I can see why she needed to dispose of the bodies she'd killed in her apartment, but the drug dealers? She could have easily left them there to rot. The best part of this movie was seeing the super. He's always such a character.

'Beware hipsters', it says somewhere on a wall, very early on in the film. I'm guessing that these two youngsters are hipsters, because I don't know much about the phenomenon. It appears there are hipsters in Miranda July's 'The Future' (2011), but other than that I had to look it up elsewhere on the net; they were already around in the '40s of the previous century. The fact that there is a group of friends that is, ahem, falling apart in this film, make it believable that those words formed a true writing on the wall...Beyond that, there's lots of other associations that came up during 'Alyce'. Adam Wingard's 'A Horrible Way to Die', Stuart Gordon's 'King of the Ants', 'Edmond' and 'Stuck' and Lucky McKee's 'May' and 'Sick Girl' for instance, and during the scenes with the drug dealer I couldn't help but think of (De Palma's) 'Scarface' and 'True Romance'. And even the comedy series 'The Office' came up when the two girlfriends were out on the town, getting wasted after work - I'm out on a limb there, I know...That first half hour was a lot of fun: Jade Dornfeld and Tamara Feldman are radiant, act well, there are fun dialogues and there's the right amount of tension and chemistry going on. On top of that it was very nicely filmed. But after that, it's a bit of a bumpy ride. Luckily, every time things are starting to drag on, there's something funny or interesting to make up for it. The speech of the drug dealer wasn't all that interesting though, and the masturbation scene felt very staged, but I shouldn't complain about that last one, really...The fun and gory finale was a good choice: all pretensions hacked to pieces, and... 'What?' That's right; what?A big 7 out of 10.

"Alyce" is directed by Jay Lee and stars Jade Dornfeld, Tamara Feldman, James Duval and Eddie Rouse. The story follows two best friends reconnecting after a small period of "too close for comfort" in their relationship. However after accidentally pushing best friend Carroll off the roof of a building Alyce finds her world crumbling fast. It isn't long until she spirals into a reality of darkness filled with drugs, reckless sex and homicidal impulses. The film is a dark satire and utter gorefest as viewed through Alyce's perspective. "Alyce" is a unique blend of art-house expressionism and surrealism. It is a very dark comedy that plays with the whole "Single White Female" personality disorder pushing the scenario beyond the traditional outcome. The film takes a very quirky off-beat approach that reminds me of Todd Solondz's or Alexander Payne but with a lot of gore and blood. The character of Alyce is one of the most twisted sisters that I have seen in cinema in a long while that is as likable as she is horrifying. The movie starts casually, building on the close yet distant emotional relationship between the friends. It is close in the fact that in the beginning they really do seem to be the only one each other can connect with and yet distant due to the fact that Alyce tends to absorb Carroll's personality traits to become her own in that "unsettling- uncomfortable" manner. The series of events that unfold after the tragedy and Alyce's fall from her own state of normalcy is one that both entertains and chills. It is one of the most disturbing slides into madness I have seen on film. I really found no fault in the movie and enjoyed every gory psychotic hot-mess act of homicidal mania that Alyce displayed. Plus the gore and bloody kill shots were pretty d*mn cool and gruesomely in your face.