In Russia, Victim Murders You

Film: Botched
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

A lot of horror movies have given us protagonists who are criminals, either intentionally or forced to be so as the premise. Crime movies are a pretty easy sell in general, as are horror movies, so it makes sense to combine them. The entire premise of a crime/horror movie is that the criminals end up trying to commit a crime in a place that is cursed or haunted or against someone who is worse than they are. From The People Under the Stairs to this year’s Abigail, a criminal plot is an easy transition to horror. And so we have Botched.

Richie (Stephen Dorff) is a thief working for Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee), a Russian mob boss. Richie works for him because Groznyi smuggled Richie into the U.S. years before, which means that Richie is in his debt. The film opens with a diamond heist that goes well until a freak car accident followed by another one causes Richie to lose the diamonds. Now, with nothing to show for his work, Richie needs to pull off a new heist to repay his boss.

This new heist is going to take place in Moscow. Richie and his two accomplices, Yuri (Russell Smith) and Peter (Jamie Foreman) are to break into a penthouse apartment and steal an antique cross that is alleged to have belonged to the first czar. Peter, who is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is and also has a temper problem, shoots someone in the apartment, and soon enough, the entire building is on lockdown. The three criminals, on an elevator filled with people, wind up on the thirteenth floor of the building, now with a group of hostages. The floor appears to be under construction, and also appears to be a maze of corridors and doors.

Contact is made with the authorities, and Richie, being the only one of the three thieves who has any brains, makes a deal with the police—they will give up a hostage in return for some time to think. However, the hostage isn’t taken to the police. Instead, he is brutally killed. Suddenly we’re not in a hostage situation; we’re in a situation where people are locked into a specific location with a crazed killer.

What’s going to happen from this point forward is a slow whittling down of the people, both the thieves and the hostages. Meanwhile, Richie bonds with Anna (Jaime Murray) as the two plot to get out and a group of hostages led by Sonya (Bronagh Gallagher) tries to take power for themselves. It’s also soon evident that the people that Richie and his accomplices stole from are incredibly powerful and are probably behind them ending up on the 13th floor, which appears to have a shrine to murdered people.

Botched is also a comedy, although not a great deal of what happens in this movie is actually funny. There’s a lot of gore—decapitation, people being cut in half, people being skinned—and a lot of the gore an violence is played for laughs. Honestly, that’s the way to do horror/comedies. Make them as obscene as you can and when people react to it (as you know they will), sit back and revel in your newfound notoriety. And that is the overall strategy of the movie.

Botched really is a pretty simple film. The heist goes bad, and Richie knows that no matter what, he has to emerge from the building with the cross. This is despite the fact that it appears to be a part of some prophecy, a prophecy that is literally written on a series of human skins that have been stitched together. So, once Richie and his team have been captured, it’s all about them trying to get out while the cast around them tries to survive as well.

A lot of these characters, naturally, are played for comedy. This is definitely true of Peter and Yuri. Peter is dumb, loud, and short-tempered. In fact, it was his unnecessary killing in the initial incident that led to the current issue. Peter is a foul-mouthed idiot while Yuri is just an idiot. Hostage Boris (Geoff Bell) claims to have military training (and might), and uses this to whip up another hostage, Dmitry (Hugh O’Conor) into a killing frenzy to try to get out of the building.

Botched isn’t a great film, and it’s also not that funny even if some of the slapstick actually works. The people in general are caricatures and how they act is built into the type of character they are. And for a movie that takes place primarily in Moscow, there are a lot of people speaking English, including a few without any military training. Seriously—just use subtitles.

Why to watch Botched: It’s a premise that feels new, at least in part.
Why not to watch: It takes place in Russia. Why is everyone speaking English?