The Movie Waffler IFI Horrorthon 2018 Review - FRAMED | The Movie Waffler

IFI Horrorthon 2018 Review - FRAMED

framed 2018 film review
Home invaders broadcast their violent actions over the internet.

Review by Eric Hillis

Directed by: Marc Martínez Jordán

Starring: Daniel Horvath, Àlex Maruny, Biel Montoro, Ann Perelló

framed 2018 film poster


There's one genuinely clever piece of filmmaking in director Marc Martínez Jordán's Spanish splatfest Framed. It involves a young woman taking selfies in a garden at night, unaware that a killer is lurking behind her. Each time the flash from her cellphone illuminates her, it also reveals her potential attacker gaining ground. There's a similar scene in David Gordon Green's Halloween involving a motion sensor light, but Martínez Jordán pulls his version off to much better effect by having it play out in a simple, well composed static shot.

framed 2018 film review

This one moment shows that Martínez Jordán knows a thing or two about how to construct scares, which makes it all the more frustrating that his moronic movie is otherwise an unwatchable, mean-spirited, offensive slab of Iberian indignity.

Arriving about a half decade too late, Framed asks the tired old question of whether we're spending too much time online. The title refers to an app that allows users to stream live video in real time over the internet, and the film seems to think that this is some sort of innovation exclusive to its story, rather than something that exists already in the real world in multiple forms.

framed 2018 film review

An unnamed Jared Leto lookalike (Àlex Maruny) has taken to using the app to stream acts of violence. In the opening scene we see him and his accomplices sneak up on a middle-aged man having an extra-marital twist in a car with his secretary, before unleashing his drugged up wife, who bludgeons her unfaithful husband to death.

Later, the gang arrive at an upscale Barcelona home where a group of young friends are throwing what appears to be the world's dullest party. What follows plays like an instalment of the Purge franchise, if it were directed by a 12-year-old edgelord whose favourite movie is Suicide Squad. The gore is gross enough, but what makes Framed so offputting is its constant attempts to offend as many groups as it can, reaching a nadir in a rape scene played for laughs. Even the characters we're supposed to root for coming off as a bunch of racists and homophobes. I initially thought I would be more than happy to see this lot die a painful death, until I had to actually endure watching them die a painful death.

framed 2018 film review

On a technical level, Framed is relatively polished. Martínez Jordán knows how to direct; the neon cinematography feels like a cliché at this point but it does boost the production value; and the synth score, while again sounding a little tired, adds to the slick sheen. But all this is for nothing if we're forced to watch a bunch of reprehensible characters mouthing obscenities like tough 10-year-olds passing around a fag end behind the school bike shed. Framed may well be my least favourite movie of 2018, but your Joker obsessed kid brother will love it.


2018 movie reviews