Harpoon: Whale Watching Massacre

Bizarre but not funny enough

     

A pretty bizarre Icelandic-Finnish-British horror film that basically transplants the setting of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to Iceland, as a group of international whale watchers fall victim to the cannibalistic family who lives on a decomissioned whaling ship. The movie tries hard to be deliberately offensive to the gentler sensibilities of the viewers, but it can hardly be called a satire. Director Julius Kemp and writer Sjon just ladle the film with one racist-sexist-anti-environmentalist "stereotype" aftere another, but very little among them are actually funny and most often generate "huh?" response. It kind of shows just how difficult it is in this day and age to make something genuinely disturbing yet has a sense of humor, like the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. The Japanese chaperone character was the only character sort of interesting and she could have worked, had it not been for the utterly amateurish acting delivered by Nae Yuuki. Or perhaps something got lost in the process of director comunicating his intent. Not scary, not funny, just weird. Correct that, weird AND offensive.