Twisted Sister
After chatting to the Stranger (Kevin Sorbo) online, Julia (Valerie Azlynn) meets up with him in a restaurant for a proper date only to get a strange feeling and decides to cut the date short. And she was right as the Stranger has a penchant for kidnapping women he meets online, branding them with his mark before murdering them and dumping their bodies in a deep water filled grave in the middle of nowhere. Except Julia escapes and as it turns out is no innocent little flower herself as she turns the tables on the Stranger.
I don't know for sure but I get the sense that when they made "Julia X" they made it as a mainly straight horror and then when they watched it back decided it didn't quite work so they reshot some scenes and made them tongue in cheek. As I said I don't know whether that was the case but it gives "Julia X" a strange split personality which actually works really well because for a while it comes across as a typical psycho kidnapping women to torture in their basement type movie with the psycho enjoying branding his victims with an X. But then it changes when the tables are turned and you are left bemused by how the tables actually get turned. I can't say more on that because it will give too much away and the surprise is part of what makes the movie.
But then there is the tongue in cheek side of things and there is a scene where the Stranger having abducted Julia and taken her to his lair is cleaning himself up in front of a heart shaped mirror whilst listening to "Close to You" by The Carpenters and giving himself an admiring look in the mirror before putting on welding goggles. It is so tongue in cheek that it takes you by surprise and puts a huge smile on your face with Kevin Sorbo selling this side of it. In fact Kevin Sorbo makes this movie work because he has this almost laid back style which flicks between ageing hunk and psycho to make it lots of fun.
The thing is that whilst "Julia X" is a lot of fun as it flits between simple horror and then tongue in cheek comedy with some fun twists it doesn't have anything more. Once the major twist comes after about 30 minutes the movie just goes back and forth, yes it tries to establish some character depth but it is almost a case of being a good idea for a horror short rather than a full length movie.
What this all boils down to is that "Julia X" is a lot of fun and whilst technically not a horror comedy has enough tongue in cheek scenes to make you smile time and again. Plus it stars Kevin Sorbo who brings a huge chunk of Sorbo to the role which makes it all the more entertaining.
