The Factory

What factory. What does that... WHAT.

"Based on true events NO REALLY"

So starters, the tagline for this movie suggested it was based on real events. There is no proof or even suggested evidence of that. So get that out of the way!

Happy Tuesday everyone, welcome back to The Tagline. Netflix was recently flooded with an explosion of new crappy movies, and so I'm here to deliver the goods, starting first with a police murder mystery called The Factory. It follows two detectives, Mike (played by our main man John Cusack, check out my fave five here) and Kelsey (Jennifer Carpenter, of Dexter fame) as they attempt to hunt down a man they believe to be a serial killer of prostitutes. During this hunt (which isn't going at all well) Mike's daughter Abby (Mae Whitman, she appeared in my review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower), after being dumped by Tyler from the Vampire Diaries, is picked up by said serial killer, because she basically looks like a hooker.

WEREWOLVES ARE LAME TYLER!

Then we discover that the guy... well he IS a serial killer, but also he's something worse. Several of the girls he's kept... and used as baby making machines he keeps chained up in a dungeon. This is when I started to figure out the meaning of the title (though the movie is nice enough to have a cop go "looks like a baby factory HURF DURF" right at the end). So Mike is racing to catch this guy before he murders, or maybe impregnates his teenage daughter. Swell. Along the way naturally there are twists and turns and a twist at the end. I guess John Cusack got a taste for chasing serial killers after he was in The Raven?

Listen, being kidnapped by a crazy person is ALL about
trust and commitment. And torture and weird sex stuff.

Unfortunately, this movie is a lot crummier than The Raven. While I won't stand here and act like that was the best movie ever, it was at least decent. This movie was frankly just kind of boring. It was utterly predictable for its duration... and just felt like the movie was having John Cusack run around following false leads just to draw out the movie's contrived plot to its obvious conclusion. Only WAIT there is a TWIST at the end. I'm going to go ahead and reveal it because it is dumb and the movie is bad. Apparently Mike's partner, who is Deb, is IN ON IT THE WHOLE TIME AND A WEIRD SEX BABY ACCOMPLICE. Now I say it's a twist, but the movie just sort of pulls this out of its ass at the last minute, leaving me to wonder why it even bothered. I guess that was its eleventh hour attempt to make the movie interesting, but if so, sorry gang, mission failed.

John looks really stressed about being in this movie.

The people who made this movie clearly had their doubts about it too. Though originally finished in mid 2008 and slated for release in December of 2011, The Factory was never released in theaters. The movie was finally released straight to DVD in the end of this past February (that's 2013 so over two years later and almost five years after shooting concluded), and I imagine the existence of Netflix probably played a big roll in it getting released at all. That being said, I regret watching it, and John Cusack probably regrets being in it. But I forgive him anyway.

That's it for today! Join me on Thursday, when Jennifer Carpenter sticks around, but we swap out John for the other half of the dynamic Con Air duo!