Sin Eater is a horror movie with a lot against it and a curious amount for it… on occasion. The good stuff kind of snuck in and surprised me in between a lot of iffy acting and bad pacing. But it is there and, for a brief moment in the later half of the film, I thought it was going to turn around and get good. Any quality though kind of sloughed away and it’s too bad… there’s something potentially interesting here.

The film stars a woman who gets into a gruesome car wreck in a small town. She winds up convalescing in the home of the town sheriff having had her mouth wired shut by Tetsuo: The Iron Man (serious metal grill on this gal). She quickly learns that the town religion is an off-shoot of Christianity and Native American beliefs. So it’s only a matter of time for the cat to scratch its way out of the bag and reveal whatever dark secrets the town holds.

Yup – it’s folk horror mixed with, I dunno, extreme dental work? I’m not sure why the girl has to spend the entire movie (sans flashbacks) with this overkill mouth appliance that makes her hard to understand. Maybe the intent was to take away her ability to communicate… but she mumbles along just fine (and even has a portable keypad that helps her talk by computer). It’s certainly a choice and daring for the actress to put up with it… but I’m not sure why.

The film though is poorly paced, sometimes remarkably dark, bounces between ideas too much, and some of the actors are really trying, bless their hearts. But there’s just too much wrong that it overwhelms some legitimately good paranoia and fear that bubbles up at various points in the film. But that’s squandered in a wholly pathetic finale that doesn’t tell a bad story, it just tells it badly. And unintentionally laughably.

No, this is a decent twist on the humdrum average horror but the film making, acting, and pacing is just not up to snuff. This one can be skipped.

Score: 64