Otis

DVD review (region 1 & 2)
Directed by Tony Krantz
Starring Bostin Christopher, Ashley Johnson, Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, Kevin Pollak, Jared Kusnitz
Release date Out now (region 1); 11 August 2008 (region 2)

When he’s not delivering pizzas, slobbish Otis Broth (Christopher) spends his time kidnapping and murdering young women. After he abducts teenager Riley Lawson (Johnson), the rest of the Lawson family decide to take matters into their own hands…

There have been many comic takes on the zombie movie, splatter flick and slasher over the years, so it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone would make a torture porn-com.

Otis isn’t really a send-up of the genre – many of the scenes with the abducted girls are played fairly seriously (despite the bizarre ‘toaster bed’) and the torture sequences are genuinely horrific. But this is countered by the bickering, sitcom-style Lawson family, broadly played by Stern, Douglas and Kusnitz, and the inclusion of Jere Burns's smarm-oozing FBI agent, who seems to have wandered in from a David Lynch movie.

Presumably Otis is intended to be some kind of suburban satire along the lines of Serial Mom or Parents. It’s not entirely successful – the movie is rarely laugh-out-loud funny and the atmosphere is never quite dark and surreal enough. But it's a fairly unique marriage of two very different genres, and it’s often difficult to tell where the story is heading (you wonder at times if the writers were even sure). Director (and 24 producer) Krantz keeps things slick and stylish, and there’s a strangely endearing performance from Bostin Christopher as the serial killer slob.

The DVD includes an alternate (more comical) ending, a commentary from Krantz and writer Erik Jendresen, one of Otis’s disturbing home videos and cast and crew interviews. Matt McAllister