Classic Review: Septic Man (2013)

Since I’ve started this site, I’ve written nearly 200 reviews. In case you missed some of my earlier ones, I would like to share an older review of “Septic Man”which originally appeared here.

While trying to solve a town’s water supply contamination problems, a sewage worker named Jack (Jason David Brown) slips and falls into a septic tank and over time begins to undergo a hideous transformation. He must also team up with a gentle giant (Robert Maillet) in order to confront his crazy murderer brother known as Lord Auch (Tim Burd).

I’m just going to poot it out there and say that this film isn’t very good. I wouldn’t think one’s expectations would be very high considering the film is called “Septic Man”. It is nowhere near the food that I am currently eating (McDonald’s),

or the TV shows I am watching while writing this (Gotham, Minority Report, Scorpion, Fool Us, and Blindspot). Just to lighten things up, I will now to try to use as many toilet-related puns as possible in my review (I made one already if you didn’t notice). Now just don’t get the impression that you’ll know what the film will be about after the first scene because it is just gratuitous in it’s grossness, it just takes it down to gutter levels, and it just doesn’t make any sense on its own. Don’t expect any kind of plot or character development either. It’s like the filmmakers flushed it down the toilet, never to be seen again. What you do end up seeing makes little to no sense and is hard to follow (at least I couldn’t). They tried to introduce a subplot about some conspiracy being responsible for the contamination problem but they never really explored that. Also the scale of the crisis was only mentioned but never shown. Maybe they could have plunged those out. I thought the pacing of the film needed a few stool softeners as well so don’t expect too much excitement either since most of the film occurs within said septic tank. With all that’s been mentioned so far, it would not come as much of a surprise that the acting isn’t too great either. It just started off bad and got worse as the film went on as the dialogue was laughably bad more often than not and the lead actor, Jason David Brown, was never able to convey a sense of danger that being trapped in a septic tank should have created. At least the makeup work done on Jack after the transformation, albeit exaggerated because I doubt it would have happened that way, was decent. If you thought the beginning was bad, trust me the end is even worse. It isn’t too long either so you won’t need too much toilet paper. This film is advertised as a horror film but I did not find it scary at all because I happen to be regular I do enjoy watching bad films on occasion just so I can enjoy their badness (as many do). This one was just a little too bad for my taste.

Opening Scene (Don’t say I didn’t warn you)

Score: #2/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.