doclee32 Good action story. The filming is rather amateurish giving the viewer a headache watching the movie with so much camera shakes and sways which was done on purpose for unnecessary effects. This is aggravated by scenes switching back & forth. Luckily we have the main character's beard to help out. (The main actor with full beard means the scene is from the past, If it shows the man just with mustache then it is at the present!). Otherwise this is not a bad movie. The acting is quite good and full of fast moving action. The movie is all about killing and showed how it can be done horribly. It should be classified as adults only. It can also be classified as a horror movie.

evanston_dad Well, the title ain't lying. Lots of people die in this movie, either on screen or off, and one person comes very close to dying, and all of the methods used are pretty horrible."A Horrible Way to Die" brings an admittedly unique spin to the serial killer movie. It uses mixed up chronology to tell the story of a woman whose boyfriend, a convicted serial killer, escapes from prison and comes back to find her, and the efforts of a new love interest to help her and keep her safe. The wacky order in which the story is told makes it feel richer than it probably is, and there are some major plot twists toward the end (up there with some of the biggest) that are handled less than delicately (you can practically hear the gears grinding at one point as the movie shifts into an entirely new direction). And stylistically it feels like a film made by a film student who's been itching to get his hands on a camera and can't control himself once he has -- the camera is always, I mean ALWAYS, moving, randomly zooming, drifting off to the edges of the frame, going out of focus. It's exceedingly annoying.But the film does have a morbidly grim appeal to it. I can't say I necessarily enjoyed watching it, but I can say that it was memorable.Grade: B-

James Tabor I was terribly disappointed in this film by a director, Joe Swanberg, whom I had come to admire and follow quite avidly. I did not so much object to the wavy camera technique, the flashbacks making the narrative sequence a challenge to follow, or even the muffled dialog and confusing lighting. The story itself was utterly and totally inane, stupid, ridiculous. It was not that it had a "surprise" ending but that the ending was utterly absurd. Truly a disappointment and all the more so coming from Swanberg, who has done such great work. How Amy Seimetz agreed to participate I have no idea...she is truly one of the great actresses of our time.

jgc5060 A horrible way to die is nothing more than a horrible way to make a movie. It looks like they just blasted some lights, cranked the shutter speed and did hand-held to make an "artistic" movie. Well, there is nothing "artistic" about this, and this is coming from someone who is a huge fun of unique and original F-U Hollywood film making. I'm a huge fan of Gaspar Noe, and I appreciate directors who "break the rules." These guys do nothing but shaky hand-held the whole time, and man is it annoying! The acting and music is good, but I feel like the camera man has never operated a camera before! It's the same type of shot over, and over, and over. You couldn't beat a dead horse any more than they used out of focus shots to transition scenes, and hand-held shakiness to show hectic moments in the movie.I could understand if they used some hand-held and shakiness, but maybe for 5 percent of the movie, not 95 percent! Even if your a film student, I don't think you'll like this. It looks like they shot it all in 3 days. The camera work is a far cry from human vision. Human's don't float their eyes aimlessly in a shaky haze. The only point of view shot is the point of view of a really bad camera man! It's like a really depressing and poorly made reality show.Please don't compare this movie to anything Gaspar Noe has done. Gaspar Noe's camera style isn't shaky vision, it's Gaspar Noe vision, and isn't easy to replicate, as these guys probably found out. Everything Gaspar Noe does is delivered with an original and innovative sense of technical brilliance, which this movie doesn't touch with a mile long pole. Gaspar Noe films make you interested and actually want to watch the rest of the movie, not take your eyes off screen because you have a head ache.This movie is not much more than a student film with a really nice camera and good actors. The camera work just makes it impossible to actually get into. The script doesn't really go anywhere, and there's not much suspense. The music, color grading, and acting are all decent but unfortunately, they don't know how to set up a tripod or dolly, so you have to torture yourself to see if the acting is good or not. Please invest in a tripod, or Steadicam, or just quit floating around like a film student trying to be artistic! Hand-held film making can be really awesome, but this is a very poor example. The camera-work in Blairwitch Project was better, and they didn't even know how to use a camera! Hold the camera against your head if you have to, the more points of contact the more stable. What a horrible way to make a movie.