I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A family moves to a new town because the mother is a schizo who murders men who she believes are out to rape her. The father covers up the crimes, and the daughter suffers the trauma. The daughter soon gets a boyfriend and the mother goes over the edge. Low-budget, crude, and basically stupid horror film, with a story that is on a level of marginal originality, but is filmed on such a level of incompetence. Everyone in this film either overacts or underacts, and the pace goes completely slack in the second half. Some gory, memorable moments (rat eating it's way through a woman's stomach, old lady carved up with an electric knife) are brought into the story but they don't keep this from being a flat horror movie. I like low-budget horror, and this is not bottom-of-the-barrel for low-budget horror, it's just nothing I would like to see right away again if I was in the mood for something bad. It's fine for a single view. Two Stars.

The main problem with this film - which isn't as amateurishly made as some I've seen - is the writing. The crazy mother's actions are just too implausibly tolerated by her family. Her husband says he loves her but you'd be hard pressed to understand why, as she's just an aggressive, screwed up bitch most of the time. Her family stay loyal even as she becomes a threat to them all, but at least this means she gets to go further and further over the top, which is what the film really wants to do. If you hate movies where people doggedly refuse to act in their own best interests then this one will drive you up the wall. But casting aside these criticisms there's a lurid, cheesy quality to the film, thanks to the shameless over-acting of the mother, and the 'Mommy Dearest' aspects of her relationship with her daughter. Fans of the TV show 'Absolutely Fabulous' should see this as it's like a trash-horror variation, even down to the doddering grandmother and dowdy sensible daughter, whilst the mad mother plays like a mixture of Edeena and Patsy from that show! And it deserves mention as a film whose set piece is a stab at that classic rat, bucket and blowtorch trick so beloved of torturers with a history degree...

I've seen many, many horror movies, but this one beats it all and I don't mean in a good way. First of all the film was obviously very very cheap. The camera work is the worst I've ever seen. The story is so stupid and implausible, that you got the feeling they wrote the script it in one hour. The actors are all so bad, it's beyond belief. But the worst of it is, that there is no humor at all. There are just some mediocre tasteless gore effects for splatter fans. On the video cover is written, that this film is a psychological Thriller - far from it ! It's nothing but a bad, dumb little movie,that has no, really no qualities. 1 out of 10.

By most standards "Epitaph" is not a good film. The production values look cheap, the acting in extremely over-the-top and campy, and the plot extremely implausible. Still, as crazy as it may be, this film remains one of my guilty pleasures and I thoroughly enjoy each viewing.Very few people probably even know "Epitaph" exists, and I suppose there is good reason for that. Most will immediately latch onto and not be able to get past the film's flaws, as "Epitaph" defines cheesy cinema at its worse. It looks like it was filmed with a home video camera, which will be a turn off to many.The film centers around a family consisting of a father, mother, teenage daughter, and mother-in law, who have to keep moving from town to town because Mommy is a psychokiller who does away with practically any guy she can get her hands on because she thinks they all want to rape her. This is the main weakness with the plot of the film; we are led to believe that the Mother has killed many many men, yet has never been caught because the family simply up and moves? The mother herself is a sight to behold and acts like a combination of Piper Laurie in "Carrie" and Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest." It is such an overblown, hammy performance that I seriously think the actress (Delores Nascar) truly believe she would be nominated for an Oscar for her performance. She treats her family, including her kind and caring elderly mother-in-law like dirt, which makes it even more unbelievable that they would keep covering her murders. Her husband hires a psychiatrist to secretly observe her because he realizes just out of hand she is. Shortly after this, a painter shows up to paint a room on the house. Crazy Momma tries to seduce him, but he refuses. In return, she stabs him multiple time with a butcher's knife and claims he tried to rape her. In an interesting plot twist, when the father goes to bury the body, he realizes (a tad late) that the dude is not dead and ends up with a pick-ax in his chest. You would think this would be the last straw for the daughter and the mother-in-law and that they would notify the police, but nope. They continue to cover for her and obey her, with dire consequences. When the daughter starts dating a boy at her school, the mother becomes obsessive. And when she finds out that her husband hired a psychiatrist, all hell certainly breaks loose.One thing that makes this film stand out is that the killings in the film are VERY violent and cruel, including one of the most creative and disturbing death scenes I have ever witnessed in a horror film (involving at rat, a bucket, and a blow torch). This alone scores the films some points for creativity, on top of the fact the really nobody is safe from the mother's rage. The ending becomes a frantic and frenzied experience for the viewer because we are just not sure how it will end up and who will be left standing. "Epitaph" also becomes more effective than it should be because it never falters from its serious tone. Some can argue that a movie of this budget and quality SHOULDN'T have taken itself so seriously, but the fact that "Epitaph" does, coupled with the almost documentary feel of the film (due to the low production values) makes it seem almost like we are watching a truly dysfunctional family. The fact that the death scenes are pretty brutal and realistic only helps to create an uneasy and dirty feeling in the viewer. It is a strange, rare instance where a films flaws become beneficial and make the film even more effective. "Epitaph" is far from a great film, but I still give the film high marks. The serious tone of the film and the viciousness of the mother's murders, as well as the interaction between the family members is interesting to watch and almost voyeuristic in feel. The result is a film that had everyone thing going against it before it was popped into your DVD/VHS player, but ends up becoming much more memorable and effective that it should have.FrightMeter Grade: C+