Guilty Pleasure No. 91: No One Lives (dir. by Ryuhei Kitamura)

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Arleigh

Ryuhei Kitamura’s 2012 horror film No One Lives is a gritty, brutal revenge slasher that doesn’t aim for subtlety or depth but delivers a fast-paced, high-gore thrill ride. The story follows a couple traveling cross-country who are kidnapped by a ruthless gang, only for the man to reveal himself as a deadly predator on a violent rampage. Luke Evans, playing the mysterious and merciless Driver, leads the film with a performance that blends cold calculation and terrifying violence, keeping viewers glued to the screen.

What makes No One Lives stand out is how it leans heavily into its grindhouse and exploitation roots, which proves both advantageous and limiting. The film fully embraces the hallmarks of grindhouse cinema—fast pacing, gritty visuals, excessive gore, and an amoral story stripped down to revenge-fueled violence. This raw, unapologetic approach results in an intense, no-holds-barred experience that will satisfy fans of exploitation and grindhouse styles. The practical effects are impressively executed, with creative and shocking kills that maintain impact without descending into the ridiculous. This dedication to grindhouse aesthetics gives the film a charged energy and a cult appeal, making it a pulpy, heart-pounding experience for viewers who appreciate that sleazy, nihilistic flavor.

However, the grindhouse influence also shapes the film’s limitations. The focus on spectacle and shock means character development and thematic depth take a back seat, making the story feel thin and the characters largely unrelatable except as violent archetypes. Dialogue at times drifts toward camp, and some acting choices can feel a bit amateurish, which may pull some viewers out of the otherwise tense atmosphere. The film’s relentless brutality and amoral tone also create a polarizing effect; it’s unapologetically harsh and violent, which fits the exploitation tradition, but it’s not for everyone. Those expecting traditional horror with complex narratives might find the experience shallow and exhausting.

Luke Evans’s Driver is a compelling anti-hero/monster hybrid, a character who dominates the film with his cold efficiency and unpredictable savagery. The other characters—mostly the gang members—serve as fodder for the film’s violent set pieces, with minimal background or sympathy. This suits the film’s grindhouse style, where depth is often sacrificed for thrills and shock value. The script cleverly keeps some mystery around Driver, maintaining suspense about his origins and intentions, which helps to sustain interest amid the unrelenting carnage.

The film’s grindhouse and exploitation roots also explain its tone and style: it revels in zaniness and excess, the gore is gratuitous but skillfully done, and the revenges feel morally ambiguous and raw. The film doesn’t try to justify or soften its violence; it embraces the lawlessness and nihilism typical of exploitation cinema. While this results in a tight, entertaining 86-minute rush of thrills, it also means the film lacks subtlety or emotional resonance. The style is both a badge of authenticity for genre fans and a barrier to wider appeal.

No One Lives offers a high-energy, blood-soaked horror experience that fully embraces its grindhouse and exploitation influences. It is crafted with a strong focus on unapologetic violence, tight pacing, and a captivating anti-hero in Luke Evans’s Driver. This stylized approach gives the film its raw, relentless intensity that fans of exploitation cinema will appreciate. However, this allegiance to grindhouse aesthetics also means the film prioritizes style and spectacle over emotional depth and narrative complexity. While the movie is an engaging and brutal thrill ride for those who enjoy extreme horror, its minimal character development and abrasive tone might feel one-dimensional or grating for viewers seeking more meaningful storytelling. Overall, it succeeds as a wild, gritty exploitation flick but doesn’t aim to be more than that, making it ideal for audiences who like their horror unrefined and full throttle.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

The Daily Grindhouse: The Last Resort (dir by Brandon Nutt)

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Last Resort is a low-budget horror film from 2009 that tends to show up on Chiller a lot. It’s a low-budget film about annoying people who, largely as the result of their own stupidity, get trapped in a really bad situation. It’s a movie that many people dismiss but I’ve always found it to be a pretty effective little horror film.

In The Last Resort, Kathleen (played by Marissa Tait) is a bride-to-be who decides to go down to Mexico with her bridesmaids and have one last wild weekend for getting married. They spend their first night in Mexico getting drunk and one of the bridesmaids, Sophia (America Olivio), leaves the group to spend the night with an American tourist named Rob (Nick Ballard). The next morning, Kathleen and the three bridesmaids decide to take a tour of the countryside with two rather sleazy locals. Sophia is left behind.

Not surprisingly, the two locals drive the group out to the middle of nowhere and then rob them, seriously wounding one of the girls in the process. Kathleen and her bridesmaids are abandoned to die in the desert but they manage to find a deserted resort where they take shelter for the night. Unfortunately, it appears that the resort is also home to a murderous demon which proceeds to possess each of the girls, one after another.

The Last Resort has a really terrible reputation and if you happen to look it up on the imdb, you’ll come across a lot of negative comments about the film. But you know what? For what it is, The Last Resort is not that bad of a film. The deserted resort is a genuinely menacing location and the director Brandon Nutt does a good job of maintaining an ominous atmosphere once the girls reach the location. (Though it should also be admitted that it seems to take the film forever to reach that point.)

While the girls might not be memorable as individual characters, they are believable as a group. You sincerely believe that they would not only all be friends but that they would also be the type of friends who, once they all get together, would end up spending a drunken weekend in Mexico and get stranded at a haunted resort. In all honesty, one reason why this film resonated with me is because I’ve been on a few similar wild weekends myself. Fortunately, neither me nor any of my friends were ever kidnapped at gunpoint but I do think that there were a few cases of demonic possession on some of those weekends.

Hey, it happens.

The Last Resort is one of those films that we tend to watch and go, “God, these people are so stupid,” but, to be honest, the stupider the characters act, the more strangely plausible a film like this feels. The fact of the matter is that, at any given moment, 85% of the world is engaged in doing something stupid. Smart people find themselves in stupid situations because, seriously, you don’t ever expect to find yourself being kidnapped or possessed until you already are.

That’s one reason why horror will always be a popular genre. It’s one of the few genres that forces us to admit that, for the most part, we have no idea how vulnerable we are until it’s too late. It’s easy to dismiss The Last Resort as being a film about stupid people making stupid decisions but, for me, it works precisely because it reminds us that we are capable of being just as stupid as the unfortunate bridesmaids in this film.

The First 6 Minutes of “Maniac” Remake

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Arleigh

There was one film that had caught my interest once the project was announced in late 2011. The film was going to be the horror remake of the classic, grindhouse slasher flick from 1980 called Maniac. This film is considered by many fan of the grindhouse and exploitation scene as a classic in the slasher genre. It was also hailed by many moral groups as a prime example of how horror cinema was beginning to reach “pornographic levels of violence” especially towards female victims.

So, it was quite an interesting bit of news when the remake was announced and Frodo Baggins himself would take on the role of the film’s serial killer in Frank. It was an inspired bit of casting that gave the film’s early production a much needed boost in interest. It’s now been over a year and the film has made the genre film festival circuits and the buzz surrounding the Franck Khalfoun-directed film is that it more than lives up to the grindhouse and exploitation aesthetics of the original while bringing in a fresh new stylistic take on the slasher genre.

We have below is the first 6 minutes of the Maniac remake and one can see how creepy the POV-style the filmmakers are going to take for the film has turned out.

There’s still no release date announced for Maniac.

Trailer: Maniac (Red Band)

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Arleigh

Last November I posted news about plans to remake William Lustig’s classic grindhouse slasher flick, Maniac, and how the most unexpected choice of Elijah Wood for the role of the serial killer Frank.

The film had it’s premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and the response to the film by filmmaker Frank Khalfoun seem to be positive. Horror remakes have always been hit-or-miss. If such positive reactions are to be believed then 2012’s Maniac may just be the horror hit of the year.

The film hasn’t been picked up by a North American distributor so any sort of release date for the US is still up in the air. Until then enjoy the first trailer of the film and a good red band trailer to boot.