SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Robert J. Maxwell Sometimes a production team starts out to make a decent film and fails. The result is a bad film. Sometimes, it seems, the team sets out deliberately to make a bad film and succeeds. The result is a niche film like this, for which there is a certain audience in social space.I understand there's a twist at the end. I didn't see it because I stopped the punishment after half an hour.I give this cinematic ovoid cyst a Two because Lance Hendrickson is in it and plays an important part. That's it.The rest of the cast cannot act, period. It's embarrassing to watch them try. And the story -- you want the story? A cuckolded farmer kills his wife, her lover, and their child, chops them up, fries them on a grill, and opens a roadside hamburger stand called Roadkill that becomes so popular people flock to it.Where does he get his supply? There's nothing in it "but what I kill with my own hands." And it's true. He pursues an endless supply of half-naked ladies, their breasts bobbing, through the fields and shoots them through the head.Pfui.

Neil Welch Cyrus is a sadistic serial killer. A cute girl investigative reporter is looking into his story. Good things are unlikely to follow.It strikes me that good horror films about slasher killers fall into one of two categories: either attempts to tell a serious story about something which doesn't need sensationalising, or else blood-soaked romps which revel in blood-soaked slaughter but don't take themselves seriously.Cyrus, unfortunately, is a romp which takes itself seriously and accordingly comes across as sensationalised sadistic unpleasantness without the saving graces of either taking its subject seriously or having a sense of humour.And it's a shame, because it has some good performances, particularly from Brian Krause, laying to rest his good guy image from TV's Charmed.

MrGKB ...no matter how many genre names are attached to it, but especially when they're helmed by an unknown auteur. "Cyrus..." is uninspired and uninspiring, derivative junk, plain and simple. Presented as the tale of a documentary in the making, it offers nothing in the way of surprises or trenchant commentary on either its ostensible subject or anything else.The participation of genre actors like Brian "Charmed" Krause, Danielle "Halloween" Harris, and most pointedly, Lance "Pumpkinhead" Henriksen (never mind bit parts from the likes of Doug "Pan's Labyrinth" Jones, Rae Dawn "Tales From the Darkside: The Movie" Chong, and Tiffany "Night of the Demons" Shepis) is no guarantee of genuine appeal to fandom; in fact, it seems almost as crass as the blatant cribbing of the title from the far, far better "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." The making-of feature on the DVD is revealing, as the auteur and various actors prattle on about the film as if it were something out of the unextraordinary. I couldn't help but snicker as I observed that theater prowess does not a filmmaker make.Really, the less said about this one the better. It's make-work and paycheck-taking, nothing more. That it went straight to video is telling enough. I'm glad I lost nothing more than a smidgen of time watching it, even if those are brain cells I'll never recover.

devotchka13 If you let go of the fact that what you're watching isn't going to be a blockbuster, you may actually enjoy yourself with this film. Yes, it's a B-grade horror movie, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad (though many usually are). Here goes nothing:The story centers around Maria (Danielle Harris), a reporter, and her cameraman, Greg (Corey Gibbons), who are investigating a series of disappearances/killings, tipped to be done by a man named Cyrus (Brian Krause), "The County Line Cannibal". The movie starts off with the two of them traveling to a small, Midwestern county to speak to Cyrus's best friend Emmett (Lance Henriksen) who possesses eerily intimate knowledge of Cyrus's killing methods, and recounts the tales of the County Line Cannibal's final 7 victims to the small crew, explaining the disappearance of three young college girls the reporters were initially investigating. I have to admit, I did like this movie - a lot, and I generally don't like B-grade movies at all. The entire reason I hired this movie initially was for Danielle Harris (who's part is significant only at the beginning and in the final moments, but she is scattered about the course of the film) and I didn't expect much from this, but I genuinely enjoyed it. It was bleak and gritty and it was realistic (as it should be, being based on a true story and all). People are too caught up in immediately hating horror movies these days they make the premature decision to hate something before they've given it a chance. The acting from Krause, Harris & Henriksen was splendid, and the others (being relative newcomers) didn't do too shabby a job with their parts either. It takes a while for the movie to pick up the pace in the beginning but your patience will be rewarded. If I'm honest, in the last 10 minutes of the film, the 'twist' becomes rather obvious, but rather enjoyable none-the-less. If you're being realistic about what you're seeing here, and don't go in expecting it to be something that it's really not, you'll enjoy it. Expecting it to be something exceptional or a new step up in horror, and you'll just go home disappointed. It's nothing new, it's nothing terribly original, but it's entertaining and in a way, thought- provoking: "Who do I feel sorry for, the victims or Cyrus?". The answer's not as cut and dry as you think it is.Rating: 7/10