Muck ★½ 

HOW’S this for scintillating dialogue:

Woman: “Just because your date got crushed by a car doesn’t mean you can smack my arse whenever you want”.

Man: “Hey, I saved your arse so I can smack it whenever I want”.

Woman: “I hate it when you make sense”.

The film is Muck, a 2015 horror film, and it’s terrible.

Muck had its world premiere at the Playboy mansion which probably says everything you need to know about the intentions of debut writer, director and producer Steve Wolsh and his backers.

It’s fine to make an exploitation horror film with plenty of female semi-nudity, but you’ve got to have balance to the proceedings and be smart about your approach.

Wolsh starts with a terrible script and adds elements that are in keeping with that base standard.

There are more leering shots of lingerie-clad women than all of Michael Bay’s combined output.

There are breasts from the opening, but it feels like we have actually joined the cast part way through the movie.

How did they get to this starting point of wandering around a swamp in underwear and gum boots while something or someone is threatening them? No idea.

The film is generally too dark and full of way too many edits, apart from every scene with our friend in gumboots.

It’s actually more than 30 minutes into an 80-odd minute running time before we kind of see the first kill, which actually isn’t too bad.

But the required tension and pacing is absent, including from one guy who goes to get help with no sense of urgency at all.

Everyone takes their time doing pretty much everything, there’s a lot of Tarantino-wannabe dialogue and plenty of shots of women getting changed.

The acting standard ranges from bad to terrible and did I mention already how about a bit of decent lighting?

Unbelievably a sequel/prequel has been made by the delusional Wolsh titled Muck: The Feast of St. Patrick.

Luckily it still hasn’t got a release date, despite being filmed in 2017.