One minute, Eve is a neat and cute young lady, 21 years old and declaring her love for her boyfriend on a webcam, limiting herself to a life of marriage and children with wholesome beau Ronnie (Kris Kjornes). The next we see her as she is 'now' - chained and sweaty and bloody, in her underwear, a prisoner of Phil (Richard Tyson).Eve overpowers the man and makes her escape, only to find the building is in too remote an area to get help. So she returns, finds Phil has other female victims scattered around, and takes him on an enforced tour of his other girls, all chained up and clearly part of a sex trafficking business. Perversely, the girls have become so conditioned to their environment, they are not happy to be freed, which threatens to make Eve's mercy mission twistedly redundant.And yet she perseveres. And while the 76 minutes are filled with their fair share of running around and screaming, Director José Manuel Cravioto ensures events are tight enough to pursue a build-up of coherence and tension, so that the twist at the end is satisfying indeed.The acting is fine throughout, with Tyson giving Phil a measured quality that makes it understandable some former victims succumb to a form of Stockholm Syndrome. As this film's 'final girl' Eve, Tina Ivlev puts in a fiery and intense performance. Not for one moment do you not believe in her. Recommended.

Ten minutes into this film and you already know it's garbage. The captive konks her captor out with a brick and escapes. So far so good. She gets outside and notices the house is in some desolate area with no other houses around, just cacti and sagebrush and maybe a lizard or two. So she yells for help anyway. Who's gonna hear that and respond? A coyote? If her captor did get free at least he knows now where she is.Then the most ridiculous thing happens - she goes back into the captor's house and takes a shower! What?! You should be looking for help, not preparing for a beauty shoot! Why clean yourself when the police would need to see the bad shape the captor put you in.I'm also sure no captive would want to go back to face their captor. They'd be too traumatized to even be in the same room with him. The filmmakers needed to show why the woman had no choice but to go back and force her captor to help her. BTW, that neck noose thing she made was brilliant. At least she gets points for that. Not!

"Escape is just the beginning"I thought "Reversal" was rather disappointing. This has absolutely nothing to do with horror as a film genre. That it represents the horror of networks where mainly young girls are being abducted and afterwards being abused in an inhuman way, is perfectly clear. The thought that this also occurs in reality, is a repulsive fact which I experience as being horror. "Reversal" (alternative title "Bound to Vengeance") distinguishes itself from other rape / revenge films by omitting the rape part completely. The insinuations are present, but are not explicitly shown. At the beginning you are immediately in the middle of a kind of revenge movie mixed with a heroic rescue mission. But otherwise it's just a soulless story solely made to shock. Showing the atrocities inflicted by individuals to others, merely serves as a way to test our tolerance.The moment a brick hits the face of the sadistic serial rapist Phil (Richard Tyson also known as the drug dealer Cullen Crisp from "Kindergarten Cop"), it means the redemptive end of months (or years) of imprisonment for Eve (Tina Ivlev). An average person would quickly flee and call 911. Except Eve. After finding some Polaroid's (Guess it's the 80's) of other victims, she makes an agreement with the psychopath. He'll show Eve the other locations where the other girls are located. In exchange Eve will drop him off at a hospital, to take care of his battered, bloody face.Tina Ivlev made an impression on me. An acting performance that goes beyond sheer fear and revenge. In a convincing, realistic way she shows how she must choose between self-preservation and self-sacrifice. The transition from victim to executioner occurs without realizing it, and the roles are reversed within the shortest time. Phil is (briefly) reduced to a helpless, pleading heap of misery. Even Richard Tyson delivers a brilliant performance as the maniac doing his weekly round along dilapidated, filthy barely livable shacks where several victims are locked up in chains. But his resilience is superhuman. The manipulative Phil, however, isn't easily beaten up to a jelly and tries to confuse Eve over and over again and tries to trick her into feelings of guilt. He's in any case a creepy guy and you're all the time wondering whether he's the person in charge of the whole operation or as he claimed at the beginning just a messenger boy.I'm not really a fan of exploitation films and I don't necessarily need to see movies as "I spit on your grave". "Reversal" remains a terrible movie to watch, full of disturbing and disgusting images. Despite everything isn't brought explicitly into the picture, one can imagine the miserable conditions and the cruel treatment the victims endured. Unfortunately, this film offers no more than a vague idea about yet another immense organization larger than Eve can apprehend and again the assertion follows that she isn't aware of what she's getting into. Furthermore, it's the umpteenth film with a teenage girl soaked in blood and running around in her underwear.The entire film is a succession of perverse disclosures located at different addresses. It looks like a kind of tourist tour with human madness as a central theme, which ultimately leads to the (really predictable) denouement. Although the story isn't much of a deal and unbelievable at times, somehow it's ominous enough to hold your attention. Unfortunately, the flashbacks about better times and the neon-colored images are tiring after a while, and you long for the showdown to see how it actually runs off for Eve. A film that is recommended only for the real fans of this sub-genre.More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

This one certainly gets full marks for originality, but then what?After being imprisoned apparently for months in the basement of a sexual predator and likely serial killer, our heroine overpowers the bad guy in spectacular fashion, clouting him with a brick. She doesn't make the mistake of so many damsels - hitting him once and then making a dash for it - because damsel she ain't. After battering him senseless her first thought is naturally to escape, but a) she is out in the sticks, b) the phone line is dead, and c) rummaging through his personal papers she finds evidence that this sicko is holding other girls elsewhere. At this point it would have been best to commandeer his van and drive to the nearest police station, but if she did that, this would be a very short film. Her captivity has clearly affected her judgment, so fastening a wire around his neck on a long pole she tells him to take her to the others, who are in a number of different locations.Her first rescue goes badly when the hostage, whose mind has clearly gone, runs off and impales herself. The second is even worse, but she succeeds at the third attempt. Now there are two of them, but it soon becomes clear this guy is not working alone, and although apparently not now a serial killer, the prognosis is even worse.Leaving the third girl to call the police, she continues her mission. What lies at the end of the rainbow? Inter alia a personal betrayal. This is a film that has no real resolution, but overall it certainly does not deserve the bad reviews it has received.