Scarlett (Jamie Anne Allman) and Chad (William Lee Scott) have been having a real tough go at it as of late. They have recently lost their infant son Gunter, they’ve had to scrape up every available penny they have to pay off Chad’s gambling debts and as such they have chosen to leave their Southern California home and relocate to the Great Northwest for a fresh start. It’s a long drive and Chad probably should pull over and get some rest. He doesn’t. Next thing you know our young couple is in a ditch, in the middle of nowhere in the center of a cell phone dead spot. Now what? Well… off in the distance in the middle of a vineyard is a Farmhouse. If Scarlett and Chad knew what we know, this being that they were in the middle of a horror / torture movie called ‘Farmhouse’, then they wouldn’t have gone to that farmhouse looking for help. Alas they did not know this.

This little vineyard is run by Samael (Stephen Webber) and his hot wife Lilith (Kelly Hu). Samael and Lilith… yeah, I’m not really liking those names and thusly I’m outta there. If it was Janet and Bob I’d stick around but Lilith and Samael? Unfortunately for our young couple the nearest town is thirty miles away, it’s late and the accident knocked out local phones service so Samael and Lilith offer to put the pair up for the night and then drive them to town in the morning. Seems innocent enough. Sure they are a little ‘off’ to quote Scarlett and Samael sure is mean to their mute farm hand Alal (Nick Heyman) but the dinner was nice, the wine was tasty and in the morning they will be off and on the road to Seattle. Or not.

Turns out Samael and Lilith aren’t wrapped all that tight. I mean they call themselves Samael and Lilith, right? Instead of getting a good nights sleep the couple finds themselves in the attic getting summarily tortured. That sucks for them. The only good part of being tortured by Samael and Lilith is that watching people suffer seems to really turn this couple on causing them to constantly run off and have sex which does create some escape possibilities.

It’s hide and seek time as our young couple flee from this insane couple with the question being, of course, why? Maybe it’s due to Chad’s outstanding gambling debts. Maybe it’s just bad luck. The crazy people claim that our heartbroken couple know why this happening and I think I know why this happening. But before we get into all of that I have a set of words for you. Cheese Grater… Knee Cap. Ouch.

Hmmm…. I’m not too sure what think about this one my friends. Don’t get me wrong because ‘Farmhouse’ is plenty entertaining with all of its eyeball poppings and knee cap scrapings and meat thermometer brain impalings and whatnot, but I think my problem with this movie is that I figured out the ‘twist’ as it were far too early for it to have any real impact for me and I really can’t blame ‘Farmhouse’ for this, just the fact that I have probably seen way too many movies. Another thing that might’ve have been a little difficult to get with is buying into Steven Webber and Kelly Hu as farmers. Now in all honesty farming was simply their second pastime where their primary passion was being crazy and torturing people and that this pair of actors pulled off without a hitch. This is a little bit of a SPOILER but there was scene where Kelly Hu has to pull a meat thermometer out of her brain and she did this creepy thing with her left eye. I was just curious to know if that was a special effect or can she really roll her eye around her head that way because the woman already brings an awful lot to the table as it is with the eye trick only adding to Ms. Hu’s overall awesomeness.

Kelly Hu’s freaky eye aside, ‘Farmhouse’ is a movie that has a pretty decent atmosphere about it, the setup for our couple’s impending unfortunate situation was solid, William Lee Scott and Jane Anne Allman were suitably pathetic as this couple on the run and as we mentioned before, Steven Weber and Kelly Hu were solid as our in-house loons. There’s also a nice bit of gore for those of you who like that kind of thing, and you know who you are.

It’s just that by the time this movie arrived to where it had to go, and mind you there was some mighty disturbing imagery that one has to endure to get this point, and we are not talking about cheese graters to the knee cap either, but once it gets there it kind of gets a little silly. This end game goes on a little too long, highlighted by a supreme bad guy explaining everything for us, and it wasn’t all that scary or creepy even though it was clear that it was supposed to be. The thought of what we believed was going on was actually more tense and more ominous than the actual revealing of it.

Regardless ‘Farmhouse’ was still an okay movie. An effective mix of various genres highlighted by some solid performances and some really disturbing images. It just seemed from our vantage point that the finale could’ve been executed a little more effectively.