"The Item", written and directed by Dan Clark is a trippy mix of horror, sci-fi, and a Quentin Tarantino like crime movie. Shot on video and using 3 locations for the entire film it is obviously low budget, but still entertaining and not at all what you may expect.

Forget the box art because whatever is looking through the hole on the cover is absent from this flick. The movie takes place over the course of one night. Four criminals have been hired via the Internet to obtain an item from an eccentric scientist named Dr. Ody. The criminals are led by the charismatic sociopath Alex (writer/director Dan Clark), and include the joke of the group Fatty, the conflicted killer with a secret Martin, and the quiet Lauren. After Dr. Ody shows the group how to care for the Item if the crate's alarm goes off, he regrets his decision to sell and tries to renege on the deal. We see why this group was chosen as they deal with the doctor and his assistant.

After the opening scene, the movie shifts to the apartment of Rita, Alex's sorta girlfriend, as the 5 of them wait for Dawn and the arrival of their mysterious client to take the Item off their hands. In the meantime there are murders, transvestites, buckets of blood, hundreds of bullets, and a very chatty creature to test the loyalty of the crew of killers.

I rented this based only on box art and the blurb of reviews on the back. This movie is very, very strange. I would call it horror based on the violence, although it is very fake looking. There are elements of Anime in much of the violence, guns seem to never run out of bullets (I mean 40+ shots out of a handgun in a row), and it has a comic book like direction in many of the action scenes. While I wouldn't call it graphically violent, by the end the blood is flowing very freely.

The creature is nothing like you would expect it to be and you sense that you are missing something with the design and its' actions. When the killers meet the doctor for the first time he says about the creature "I've come to realize it's not so much what it is, but why it is." That line is left to the viewer to decipher.

The problem is that the movie doesn't lend itself to a serious discussion about just what the creature is. And the film does not reveal anything. It leaves it up to the viewer and that can be good or bad depending on how much thinking you like to invest in a horror movie. The ending gets pretty psychotic but by that time nothing will shock you and I gotta admit I kind of saw that coming.

The acting is overall good. While it starts out a bit shaky, everyone seems to get into their roles well. The best is Dan Clark as Alex. Since this is his baby that is not surprising. He is a sociopathic killer with zero conscience and he brings a cool, cocky detachment to the role that makes it easier to stick with the movie even while you are saying "What the heck is going on?" The dialogue is very Tarantino-esque, almost to the point of parody. I dug it but it was unintentionally funny in some scenes.

Overall it is worth checking out for the simple fact that there is not much else like this out there. If you are into quirky horror or indie flicks give "The Item" a try.