The Basement Review (2018) Worth Watching?

It's about a guy who gets abducted and tortured by a mental serial killer with multiple personalities.

The Basement was directed by Brian M. Conley and Nathan Ives, and stars Mischa Barton (from The Toybox and Ouija House), Tracie Thoms (from Death Proof and Grindhouse) and Bailey Anne Borders (from Raze).

Two Men. Twelve Personalities. One Living Hell.

I gotta admit, I went into this one a skeptic. I knew it was a low budget direct-to-streaming indie horror that drafted off the success of Split. I wasn't a big fan of Split which is why The Basement has been collecting dust in my watchlist for the past couple of years. But, for whatever reason the time finally came to check this one out, and I have to say, it wasn't all that bad.

"The third sign of the zodiac known as The Twins. Gemini's are said to have a dual nature."

This title card kicks off a boat load of torture porn, delivered by a dude creatively nicknamed "The Gemini Killer". This guys thing is using his victims to role play his own capture, prosecution and execution for the many people he's killed. But in the process of role playing, he's really just adding to his kill count, further fueling his self-hatred that his next victim will inevitably suffer for.

The movie starts off strong. There's bloody boobies in the first 10 seconds followed by a bizarre clown juggling pre-torture routine. This alone was enough to grab my attention and let go of the skepticism I was holding onto.

The concept for The Basement is essentially the same as Split. A disturbed guy kidnaps and imprisons people who he then reveals all of his many differing personalities to. The Basement, however, takes the story in a different direction and makes it more of a stage for some crazy torture scenes.

It's like Split soaked in blood.

Some of the personalities the Gemini Killer reveals include a clown, a cop, a detective, a lawyer, a mom, a dad, a prisoner, a doctor and an executioner. And all of these strangely feel balanced considering there's actually only 4 characters and 2 locations in this entire film.

The bloody Split thing was an interesting premise, but it wasn't quite enough to fill the entire runtime. It started to feel very repetitive after awhile. There were simply too many personalities who all just went in the same circles with the victim. And there was also a persistent sub plot which they tried to make just as intense as the torture, but it didn't land. And the single location thing paired with limited camera angles made it feel flat most of the time.

Overall, it was better than I thought it would be and had a few cool scenes (such as one especially disgusting teeth chewing scene), but it's nothing I'd go out of my way to find.

Worth Watching?

It's entertaining if torture, grit and indie gore horror is your thing and you just want to squirm for an hour or so, but if you decide to skip this one you won't be missing much.

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