The Library Geek

Horsemen poster

Horsemen

(review contains spoilers and graphic details from the movie )

Summary

The movie begins with a grisly discovery at the middle of a snow-covered park. A small table was set up with a tray full of extracted teeth and the words come and see written on trees located at the four cardinal points of the compass. Enter police detective, Aidan Breslin, whose field of specialization is forensic orthodontics and played in the movie by Dennis Quaid. He determines later on that the full set of teeth were extracted while the victim is still alive. Ouch!

But the gore and cringe-inducing scenes and details does not end there.

Another murder is again committed, this time a woman was found dead in her own house suspended by hooks in a specially-built rig. Not only that, she actually died from stab wounds in her chest that drowned her from her own blood and that she was pregnant and the unborn was taken from her womb. I think that is enough graphic details from the movie as this review is making me totally grossed out, suffice it to say, that this murder and the attendant violence is not the last one in the movie.

Going back to the plot, Breslin later on deduce that the phrase “come and see” scrawled at every crime scene came from the Bible in the Book of Revelations’ story about the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Furthermore, based on the evidence from the crime scenes of the murders, he concluded that there were more than one perpetrator, or as it turns out four horsemen.

One of these horsemen is the adopted daughter of the murdered pregnant woman, and she surrendered to Breslin bringing with her a memento from the crime. After her arrest, she will only talk to Breslin, in a series of visits, about the crime. She told him that the horsemen help her to commit the murder to cause pain to her abusive stepfather. We then find out that these four horsemen are kids who are victims of parental neglect or abuse and that they are out to avenge the pain caused by their family members. That all these elaborate preparation and ceremony was to signal the start of an apocalypse or a lifting of the veil for other kids similarly situated on how they should end the pain, as the murders are being recorded on video and broadcast on the internet. She also ever-so-slightly, hinted that Breslin’s involvement was not an accident.

As the investigation progresses, we are introduced to Breslin’s home life. That he lost his wife to cancer and he is now left with two sons, Alex, a teenager, and Sean, age 7, to take care of. We also see how the pressure of trying to solve the murders and prevent the apocalyptic threat from happening impacts the time he spends with his sons and that there exist some resentment between him and Alex because of the wife’s passing and Breslin being an absentee father most of his life. The movie’s not-so-climactic ending finally reveals how the murders are connected to Breslin’s home life and what he has to do to stop the apocalyptic threat from happening.

Review

This movie owes its premise, direction, and shock value to several movies that follow a similar theme or tone. You have Se7en for the Biblical passage-serial murder-righteous/insane killer theme, as well as, tone and direction. Frailty for the creepiness and murderer-confesses-to-cop conversations. Saw for the gore and graphic details that attended the murders. And all the murder mystery movies wherein the detective plays this cat and mouse game with the serial killer. How
ever, what makes those movies thought-provoking, and despite the graphic detail, engaging is absent in this movie.

This movie does not have the tension buildup, disturbing but engrossing scenes, and climactic ending of Se7en. This movie does not have the surprising twist of the original Saw. And this movie does not have the overall mood of danger and mystery of Frailty. Horsemen wasted a pretty good premise with its too generic and follow-the-dots story and direction.

The characters and the acting were one-dimensional and wooden, its like they all decided to watch previous films of the same tone and just decided to copy it. Quaid acted like a zombie and was haggard-looking all throughout the film. The adopted daughter with her part-catwoman, part-Hannibal Lecter impersonation of a sociopath came out comical. There was too much graphic scenes that it grosses you out more than it shocks you. The connection between Breslin’s home life and the serial murders was so obvious right from the start (hello, plateful of teeth to hook a forensic orthodontist and troubled Breslin home life scenes played out over and over again), that the big reveal at the end lost all its punch 3/4 from the movie. As Alex sums it up later, if Breslin just visited his room then he would have solved the crime much quicker and ended the movie with less violence and more logic.