Scarce
Directed by John Geddes & Jesse T. Cook
By Robert Bell

Throwing caution to the wind and shrugging off such pesky and cumbersome formalities as continuity, lighting, pacing, reason and the entire world of cinematography, Scarce manages to make an hour-and-a-half film feel like three. To call this a “film” might be an exaggeration, since a professional editing job would likely have cut it down to 35 or 40 minutes, including a good ten minutes of meat chewing and another five of the obese man slapping a big rubber dildo off of topless female torture victims. With nothing of meaning or purpose going on beyond the surface, which itself is essentially the observation that hungry rednecks like to eat snowboarders, Scarce plods forward without direction or any sort of visual or narrative trajectory aside from the occasionally laboured sequences of gore. The plot is nothing more than three buddies (John Geddes, Jesse T. Cook and Thom Webb) winding up in the Pennsylvania winter wilderness and having their meat cured for a couple of kooky cannibals (Steve Warren and Gary Fischer). The premise has been done to death but with far more competence and dramatic ire than on display. What is far more interesting than the film is the feature-length “making of” documentary that accompanies it. Everything from make-up effects to the decision to shoot a number of scenes barefoot and half-naked during a particularly frosty Canadian winter are explored to the point of redundancy, as again, almost an hour could have been cut without negatively impacting the documentary. What is most amusing, however, are the repeating title cards that come up whenever an interviewee speaks, just in case the audience has forgotten who they are within the last 30 seconds. Also included are audio commentaries from both Geddes and Cook, as well as production and set designers Cody Calahan and Gavin Peacock, which cover many of the same details as the doc.

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