The Price We Pay

After their robbery goes wrong, two criminals take refuge at a remote farm while the heat dies down, and end up finding something much more sinister there.

The Price We Pay is a cheap, overly familiar film, and an all-around generally unremarkable one too, despite having some recognizable names. I went into this hoping for more of a From Dusk til Dawn kind of thing, but I ended up with more of a “aspires to be Scarecrows” kind of thing. This is not a bad thing for a horror film to aspire to, mind you, but if you miss the mark…?

Oh boy, it’s not gonna be good.

A majority of the film’s budget clearly goes to two things here: the special effects, a decision I understand, and the salaries of those previously mentioned recognizable names, a decision I don’t understand. I mean… I know why the film wanted them, but why are those recognizable names here? Sure, Emile Hirsch has kind of hit the skids career-wise, but how the hell did Stephen Dorff end up here? What drew him to it? Did he really get that huge a share of the budget? Is he related to the director or the producers? Why?

This film itself obviously wants to be a B-Movie, it’s 85 minutes long, it gets to the bloody meat quickly, the sets all have that “friend of a friend” feel, and there’s a lot of makeup and practical effects, but the story is so incredibly threadbare. Granted, you don’t need much for a film like this, and in stories, much like in life, sometimes things happen for no reason, or decisions are made on a whim, but The Price We Pay doesn’t even pretend like it’s trying to be random.

In the movie, whenever shit happens, it’s apparent while watching it that only the reason things are happening is to get the characters to move in the direction of the meat grinder, which is obviously the point of the movie, it’s a horror film after all, so that’s why we’re here, but there’s still zero attempt to also make the characters want to move that way, want to make that decision, so the whole thing ends up feeling obvious and perfunctory, which in turn makes it guilty of the worst crime of all…

It’s boring.

And while I’m a fan of a good bloody splatter, especially one that utilizes a lot of makeup and practical effects, the gore here isn’t that great either. It’s certainly not inventive. It’s all just dull.

And that’s The Price We Pay in a nutshell… dull.