The Story
A creepy pizza delivery man, Otis, singles out young attractive women and then returns in broad daylight to kidnap them. When she wakes up, the girl of the moment realizes she is chained to the floor and gets instructions via bedside telephone that she must answer to “Kim” and succumb to the caller’s desires on prom night. The girl soon manages to escape with both the address and name of her kidnapper. She calls her family with the info, who then hide the information from the police so they can go “Last House” on poor Otis.
The Characters
Daniel Stern shows off his black comedy chops and is hilarious throughout the movie. You can tell he’s having lots of fun with his character and manages to pull off a performance that keeps the Otis experience from being a complete waste. The majority of the cast is impressive in their roles; most notably Bostin Christopher in the title role, and Kevin Pollak who plays his straight-laced brother who seems clueless about what is happening in the basement. Unfortunately the characters are locked into a script that doesn’t invest enough interest in anyone.
Effects/Gore
We get treated to someone being beaten to death, much like the plot of the movie.
Lasting Appeal
Even if the characters were something special you’d never know it as the movie plays 80’s rock and a score of loud guitar riffs from opening to ending credits. It literally distracts and drowns out everything throughout the entire movie. If the music wasn’t so quick to lull me into boredom the story probably would have. Otis is a soft core horror movie that follows a done-to-death formula and once again a formula that was handled poorly.
Final Headcount
I don’t know what Otis is. It doesn’t really fit into a genre as it’s too dark to be a comedy and too light to be a horror movie. This movie shouldn’t exist in a readily available format. I’m getting a little tired of movies that look like watered-down film school projects. I guess we shouldn’t expect anything more than this from the hack writers behind the critically panned Sublime and Crazy As Hell.
