ArdentViewer
I would count this among the worst if not the worst movie I've ever seen. The first 20 minutes were tolerable but the rest was a gratuitous display of sex, drugs, violence, and gore. The last 20 minutes in particular were so graphic that I'm amazed this film managed an R rating rather than NC 17. And through it all, there was no point - nothing gained, nothing to take away. There was no real plot, no character development, and no reason to depict all of this nastiness. I deeply regret watching the movie all the way through - in fact, I only did so that I would be able to write an accurate review. I can't fathom what other people may have been thinking to rate this film as any higher than 2 or 3 stars out of 10 - and that would only be if you really like to see drugs, sex, and gore.
Matt_Layden
I wasn't too impressed with this one. I felt that a lot of the cinematography was lacking for an effectively shot film for the viewer to enjoy. Too many dark sequences when characters were not properly lit. If done on purpose, it was a poor choice. The technical aspect of making the film is probably the biggest. Aside from the lighting, what about the sound mix? Why is it almost DEAD QUIET in the bar / club when a band is playing and there are dozens of people. Everything is the background is muted and THAT really took me out of it because it was obvious they wanted you to focus on the banal dialogue. The film sure takes awhile before it gets going, all I knew about the flick was that Alyce Kills....get it?. The reason for her descent into this madness was not justified to me. People might be more impressed with the first 3/4's of the film, but I rather enjoyed it when she gave in to the murderous impulses, as weak as they were. The scenes where she goes after people who've wronged her were the best parts. To me, the film took too long to get to the interesting parts. It drags. Gore factor? Not much here. It's mainly the "aftermath" we see lots of blood, but it doesn't really spill, it's just on the floor. A good sight gag that I enjoyed is when Vince went to call someone while hanging onto his guts, once he reached for the phone, his guts fell out. I feel like this film needed a bit more of that for me personally to enjoy it. I will say this though, it had a great ending. There were a few scenes that I thought were weird and definitely piqued my interest, all of which happen AFTER she has lost her mind. The war masturbation, Necrophilia boob touching and weird sex fight. These scenes are not the norm and when a film does something odd, it catches my attention. Unfortunately these scenes are not enough to save the film as a whole.
Pamela De Graff
With a cursory acknowledgment of the Lewis Carrol tale, Alyce is as much an entry-level clerical answer to the Fortune 500 American Psycho (2000), as it is a morbid odyssey of self discov- uh, make that self-destruction. Like a high-speed bullet train to Hell, Alyce Kills is novel, slick, and exciting, but it doesn't take us where we want to go.Young, pert Alyce (Jade Dornfeld) toils away in a depressing corporate cubicle for a shrewish boss at a thankless job. After work she trudges home to her cramped apartment to freshen up before some much needed steam-venting at dingy nightclubs. It's not much of a life, but Alyce has her friend Danielle (Rena Owen), an alpha female who provides Alyce with a framework of guidance upon which follower Alyce proves to be reliant.When Alyce and Danielle take the Generation X drug "ecstasy," Danielle sexually leads on Alyce. It comes out that Alyce has a crush on Danielle who then rejects her.Is it an accident then when Alyce "accidentally" pushes her off the roof a short while later? It's not clear whether Alyce is vindictive and a little crazy, or merely reckless, and irresponsible. Danielle stands on the ledge, tempting fate, Alyce mock-pushes her. Alyce is playing a game and behaves as if she doesn't intend the result -Danielle's dive to the pavement. But Alyce definitely intends to make contact, and under the circumstances it's no surprise when Danielle plunges to her doom.Despite that it led to tragedy, Alyce decides she likes ecstasy and trades sex for the drug from a repulsive dealer. Under the influence of the psychedelic, Alyce locks herself in her apartment for marathon-length trips during which she perpetually masturbates to violent videos. Conniving to obfuscate her complicity in Danielle's misfortune leads Alyce to take increasing risks until she pulls out all the stops. Traipsing across an urban landscape of bizarre characters, settings and situations, Alyce taunts the family of her victim, and eventually conspires bloody murder against those who annoy and inconvenience her.Having now lost Danielle's boundary-defining structure, Alyce's fragile veneer of sanity falls away like an uncoupled caboose from a speeding express. Her locomotive throttle is wide open and there's no engineer in the cab. Alyce resolves to take charge of her own life, but her brand of self-assertive, feminist "empowerment" is to embark upon a self-indulgent journey of risky behavior. Yet it's more like a spree, and it degenerates into a maelstrom of self destruction, dragging those closest to her along for a hell-ride on her crazy train.The theme of women scheming against men has been around at least since ancient Greece. From Aristophanes' Lysistrata, to the Biblical Eve convincing Adam to bite the proverbial apple, we've seen versions of the femme fatale in various literary incarnations through the ages. A few include Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra, Daniel Defoe's opportunistic Moll Flanders, Oliver Goldsmith's lighthearted, scheming, Katie Hardcastle in his 1773 play, She Stoops To Conquer, the conniving Matilda in Matthew Gregory's 1796 supernatural Gothic novel The Monk: A Romance, and the malevolent man-hater, Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.Whereas these feminine plotters employed cunning and sexual manipulation to achieve their aims, their modern counterparts resort to brute force. The concept of the fairer sex outwitting men has evolved into the myth of womens' domination over men, and convoluted orchestrations have given way to the karate kicks and machine guns used by characters such as secret agent Emma Peel (Diana Rigg; Uma Thurman in the 1998 film version) in BBC's The Avengers, to Max Guevera (Jessica Alba) in TV's Dark Angel, and La Femme Nikita (Anne Parillaud; Bridget Fonda in the US remake). The latest trend has dark-psyched vixens engaging in just plain psychopathic killing sprees.Alyce's quirky, but undeveloped character may be inspired by the leads in May (2002), and Neighbor (2009), two similar stories about loner hellcats who indulge their necrophilic and cannibalistic urges through acts of violence. Yet May (Angela Bettis), the film's namesake, commits her violence via a misguided search for an similarly misfit mate. In Neighbor, "The Girl," (America Olivo) thrill-kills for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it, making a living by robbing her victims and using their homes like motels.Alyce however, lacks any sensible or even cognizant motivation at all. Her deeds defy logic, her methods are unsound, and Alyce's lack of planning is sure to bring her only more trouble. We're not sure if even she understands her actions. This makes her singularly one dimensional.It's a profound disappointment, too. What's engrossing about Alyce's sexy character is not what she does, but the wry way she does it with her distinctively iconoclastic demeanor. It's not the revulsion inherent to her wanton acts of sex and violence that catches our attention, but the manner in which her smug, witty bearing holds out the promise of a satisfying payoff. We keep waiting to tumble into an epiphany of insight into her disturbed psyche, or at least some commentary about human nature or revenge. It never happens, and we're left feeling like the lone passenger on a runaway train with no destination in sight, and no emergency pull-cord to stop the projector.
