On the down side a somewhat well worn storyline of people suddenly waking up in some undisclosed secure location and have to fight or kill follow abductees to find freedom. Has been done in many manifestations before. Nothing new here; same cameras with our hidden captor at first known only through their voice. Typical cage fighting - martial arts or whatever one can come up with for fighting. Back story, also done before, of wealthy audience being entertained throughout as inmates fight-for-life. Overacting, bad person roles especially; thus, not too believable. Ending scenes came across as even less believable and therefore viewer engaging.

On the up side, follow up with the slightly similar "The Seasoning House".

Short and sweet review.

Honestly, all facets of the film (but one) are no worse than at least average, with some being quite good. The acting is fine, camera work is ok, story is interesting and a good plot, sound and other post-production are good...but they missed the mark, in my opinion, on presentation.

This is essentially a new take on the "women in prison" sub genre. It's very violent, in the sense that the plot is women having one-on-one fights to the death; the violence is ALMOST exclusively hand-to-hand combat violence. That said, Raze is essentially an exploitation film, minus the parts that make exploitation films exploitative. There is very little blood, no nudity, and no real gore. The content, or lack thereof, essentially renders this as exploitationless exploitation. While it is just MY opinion, if you're gonna make an exploitation film, then make an exploitation film. Make it ultra-violent, supremely bloody, nastily gory, and throw in some nudity for good measure. Seriously. Now, it's obvious that budget was an issue, and the inclusion of a bunch of gore would have added a relative amount to the cost, but it sure would have been cool had they done so.

All in all, it's a very watchable film...even enjoyable. Nothing to write home about, but worth the time, and since it's streaming on multiple platforms, it's likely free as well. If you're not a fan of violence or martial arts type films, this is definitely not for you, but it's nowhere near as brutal and dark as some reviews suggest.

When I read the synopsis in the Fantasia Film Festival program, I was intrigued. Even though the premise was about abducted women, it did not seem like your typical movie about helpless women tortured under the hand of men. It also did not seem like a cliché women on women violence type of movie. It also used words like "empowered" and "different".

And so I went in expecting just that. Something different. I especially went in expecting this movie to make some kind of statement about the way this society views women in general. I actually thought that the organization that abducts the women was a metaphor for the patriarchal system and that the "empowered" women portrayed would eventually break free from that system.

And so when the movie ended, I felt let down. Like somehow, the filmmaker was telling us that no matter how hard we fought, we could not defeat the system.

I was lucky enough to attend a screening after which the director of the movie as well as the principal actress were both there to answer questions from the audience. And so when I pointed that out, the filmmaker became defensive and explained that he did not want to make any kind of political statement whatsoever and that he just wanted to give us an "enjoyable fun movie to watch with lots of fighting." He also made a point to tell me that if it had been men fighting, I wouldn't have made the comment I made.

Exactly. But this movie was about women, strong women, who were imprisoned by a cruel system forcing them to fight one another. It had everything in place to make a strong statement, give us something to reflect upon and do what a good movie should always do: teach us something.

And yet, this movie has no depth and isn't different from any other action movie with fights. To be "different", this movie needed a message beyond "look, chicks fighting and it looks real!".

In the end, the plot of "Raze" falls into the typical normalization of helpless women forced to behave a certain way by an oppressive system passed on from father to son. To me, this is the precise opposite of "empowered".

I'm awfully disappointed.