It’s Déjà vu all over again - or so the saying goes – in this splatteriffic project from German director and visual effects maestro Olaf Ittenbach. Ittenbach - whose last job was running the gore game on fellow countryman Uwe Boll’s disaster BloodRayne - fares slightly better in terms of overall storytelling and visually pleasing cinemascapes, but once the first line of dialogue is uttered a dark truth becomes crystal clear - this dude evidently has no idea how to direct a cast.

It seems pretty certain that the language barrier amongst principal cast members is kicking the crap outa this film. Shot in Germany with a relatively amateurish group of actors - all trying to speak English (and I suspect some are trying this phonetically) – the whole film is a disjointed mess of stepped-on lines and reactionless glances. It looks pretty damn obvious that these guys don’t know what the others are talking about. It’s sort of like paying witness to a filmed version of any given high school Shakespeare production – just a bunch of poor bastards standing around waiting to state their memorized verses, but with no actual feel for the emotions behind the words. It’s jarring and distracting and it’s only surmounted by the over-the-top intensity of the effects work. In fact the saving grace of the film is its ability to lay waste to virtually any character in the most heinous and gruesome ways.

Effects aside, the performance are a shame, because Ittenbach might have had something really good going on in this film. The story follows a Doctor - played by American Christopher Kriesa (HELLRAISER: INFERNO) – who after surviving a horrible car wreck is taken hostage by a group of escaped convicts. As the group makes its way through the forest - en-route to the Canadian border - they come across an old farmhouse. Feeling that they can make shelter inside and take some time for the doctor to address one of the cons’ wounds, the killers break down the door and immediately hold the strange clan of inhabitants’ hostage. But, events turn from bad to worse as they soon discover this mysterious family is hiding a deadly secret of their own.

While the synopsis above might sound stale, it’s the second half of the film that adds to the intrigue. Our fair doctor - with the help of one of the female family members - escapes from the house, only to be captured and accused of aiding and abetting the original fugitives. As the Doctor is being transported to a holding cell, the Department of Corrections bus he is riding in is also caught up in a terrifyingly bloody crash. Now, our intrepid hero and a new group of escaped cons are back in the woods and it won’t be long before they too come upon the house of blood.

Without even seeing this film, I’ll bet you’ve got a pretty good idea that things aren’t looking any brighter for this new group, but without witnessing first hand, you’d be hard pressed to believe the amount of carnage that Ittenbach manages to throw on the screen over the 105-minute course of the film. So, if you can put the poor line delivery aside and focus on the fairly interesting plot and the barrels of blood, bone, brains and bile that fill the screen, you might just start wondering how long it’ll be before Boll’s backers start coughing up cash to finance Ittenbach’s first big budget bonanza. Let’s just hope before that time comes, the filmmaker manages to learn that actors are more than just talking props.