Strangeland Review

Review of Strangeland (1998) by screenqueeen: 👍 3/5

Scarecrow Video Psycho Challenge #9. Digital S(t)imulations

Now this is an odd one. Part police procedural, part proto-torture horror and part creepy cyberspace catfishing scheme. Dee Snider is pretty effective as one who subscribes to the body modification crowd who believes it's his calling to modify other people's bodies against their will. Something essential is missing from the overall point of the film, however, even though Captain Howdy questions his identity and desires with his own arc but that kind of gets discounted after the events of the last third, which essentially makes it kind of moot.

This also came at a weird time for horror as torture porn was about to dominate the box offices for a time and there's some similarities this has with titles like HOSTEL. But you can tell that it doesn't take much pleasure in the torture gags, even if we see that Captain Howdy does (which is a tasteful choice in this case). There's also something to be said about presenting teens as this reliably gullible force that in the early days of chat rooms would willingly fork over personal information that would get parents so riled up. The parents in this don't seem to care as much as they should following their daughter's demise.

Even after its quite graphic and shocking depictions of torture it still kind of just sits in the middle of the road. There's just mot much fun to be had in STRANGELAND.