Sometimes, when watching a movie, I like to guess what the film is going to be based on the title. In this case, I disturbingly figured out, prior to pressing play, exactly what Cut Off was going to mean, and that says a s**t-ton more about me than it does about the movie. But I digress.
At 4 minutes, Cut Off is done long before its traumatizing effect wears off. To set the stage, Cut Off concerns a man (Greg Crum) who is taking the time to scissor out his favorite bits of the female anatomy for a wall collage of perversion. This eventually excites him, and you have a pervert with a hard-on and a pair of scissors and the title of Cut Off… YOU do the math.
I struggle with the “why” of making a short film like this, because I don’t know if it has any value beyond the shock (and shock it does, by going well beyond what you would expect of it), but cinema exists solely to shock all the time so that’s not a knock on the film at all (and also not my call; ask filmmaker Brian Hatfield). The film goes for gritty, shocking and depraved, and it hits all three. The tone is ugly, it feels like an old reel of 8mm film someone should have buried deeper under their backyard shed, and you’re left with a level of voyeuristic dread. Do I like what Cut Off is telling me? No, but it does deliver it well.
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Still can’t tell if I want to even bother watching this or not.