Excision 2012 Review: A Shocking Horror Sleeper with a Killer Cast
My Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 4.5/5
Some horror movies announce themselves with a masked killer on the poster. Others sneak up on you. This Excision 2012 review is about one of the sneakiest. On the surface, it looks like a quirky story about an awkward teenage girl. Underneath, it is one of the strangest, boldest, and most unsettling horror films of its decade. It also has a supporting cast so unlikely that you may need to check the credits twice.
Excision 2012 Review: Not the Horror Movie You Expect
Excision premiered in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2012. It quickly became one of the most talked about films of the festival. Some viewers loved it. Some walked out shaken. Almost nobody forgot it.
It is hard to describe without making it sound like several different movies at once. It is a story about teenage alienation. It is a jet black comedy about a dysfunctional suburban family. It is a series of surreal, bloody daydreams. Then, slowly, it becomes something much darker.
That mix is the whole point. The film keeps you laughing, cringing, and wondering where it could possibly be going. By the time you figure it out, it is far too late to look away.
So here is the most important advice in this Excision 2012 review. Go in knowing as little as possible. Do not read the full plot online. Do not watch too many clips. The less you know about where the story ends up, the harder it will hit.
Everything below stays spoiler free. You will learn who is in it, why it works, and whether it is right for you. The ending stays locked in the operating room where it belongs.
Meet Pauline: One Seriously Troubled Teenager
Pauline is a high school senior who does not fit in anywhere. Her hair is greasy and tangled. Her skin is covered in blemishes and cold sores. She slouches, mumbles, and says exactly what she thinks, no matter how inappropriate.
She also has one big dream. Pauline wants to be a surgeon. She is fascinated by blood, bodies, and medicine. She reads about procedures, studies anatomy, and spends a lot of time imagining what lies beneath the skin.
Her home life is a mess. Her mother is strict, image conscious, and constantly disappointed in her. Her father is a mild man who tries to keep the peace. Her younger sister, Grace, is sweet, popular, and seriously ill with cystic fibrosis.
Pauline adores Grace. Her desire to become a doctor is tied up with a wish to save her sister. That gives the character a strange, tender side that keeps you watching, even when she is being completely awful.
At school, Pauline treats teachers and classmates with open contempt. She also decides it is time to lose her virginity, and she approaches the task with clinical curiosity. Meanwhile, her mother sends her to a church counselor in the hope of straightening her out. None of it goes the way anyone expects.
That is as much of the setup as you need. The rest is Pauline's journey, and it is best experienced fresh.
AnnaLynne McCord Is Almost Unrecognizable
In 2012, AnnaLynne McCord was best known as a glamorous television star. She had played beautiful, scheming characters on Nip/Tuck and the 90210 reboot. Casting her as Pauline looked like a strange choice on paper.
It turned out to be a brilliant one. McCord wanted the role so badly that, according to Bates, she started chopping off her own hair during the audition process. She threw away every trace of her usual image. With a lank wig, sallow skin, cold sore makeup, and heavy brows, she is hard to recognize.
The makeup is only part of it. McCord changes her posture, her walk, and her voice. Pauline hunches forward and stares a little too long. She speaks in a flat, confident deadpan that makes her insults land like scalpel cuts.
The real triumph is that McCord never asks for sympathy. Pauline is rude, arrogant, and often cruel. Yet McCord lets small cracks show. A flicker of hurt in her eyes or a moment of real love for Grace reminds us there is a lost kid in there somewhere.
That balance is what makes the character so memorable. She is funny, frightening, and sad, sometimes all in the same scene. Critics at the time called it a fearless, vanity free performance, and it still stands as the best work of McCord's career.
Traci Lords Gives the Movie Its Other Great Performance
If Pauline is the heart of the movie, her mother Phyllis is the pressure that keeps squeezing it. Traci Lords plays her, and she is outstanding.
Phyllis is a suburban mother who cares deeply about appearances. She wants a tidy home, well behaved daughters, and a respectable place in her church community. Pauline ruins every one of those hopes on a daily basis.
Lords could have played Phyllis as a cartoon villain. Instead, she makes her painfully real. Phyllis is controlling and often harsh, but she is also exhausted and frightened. She is watching one daughter slowly lose a battle with illness and drifts into something she cannot understand.
Their scenes together are the best in the film. The arguments feel uncomfortably familiar. Pauline wants her mother's approval but would rather die than admit it. Phyllis wants to love her daughter but has no idea how to reach her.
That believable relationship gives the strange horror a solid foundation. The more grounded the family feels, the more disturbing the story becomes as it heads toward its finale. Lords deserves far more credit for this film than she usually receives.
Wait Until You See Who Else Is in This Movie
Here is the fun part. For a small independent horror film, Excision has one of the most surprising supporting casts you will ever see.
Ariel Winter plays Grace, Pauline's sick younger sister. Winter was already famous as Alex Dunphy on the hit sitcom Modern Family. She brings warmth to Grace, and her sisterly scenes with McCord are surprisingly touching.
Roger Bart plays Bob, the girls' gentle, worn down father. Bart is a Tony winning Broadway performer who has also appeared in films such as Hostel: Part II. He makes Bob a quietly sad figure, a man trying to keep a family together with very little help.
Then the cameos start rolling in. Malcolm McDowell, forever famous as Alex in A Clockwork Orange, turns up as Mr. Cooper, one of Pauline's teachers. Ray Wise, Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks, plays Principal Campbell. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin appears as Amber, a cotillion instructor. Matthew Gray Gubler from Criminal Minds plays Mr. Claybaugh.
The best surprise of all may be John Waters. The legendary director of Pink Flamingos and Hairspray plays William, the church minister who tries to counsel Pauline. Waters and Traci Lords had worked together decades earlier in Cry-Baby, which makes their reunion here a treat for cult film fans.
So how did this bizarre little horror movie end up with this cast? Part of the answer is the script. Many actors were clearly drawn to its strange, fearless voice. Part of it is the spirit of the project. Bates was making a film that honored cult cinema, and he invited some of cult cinema's biggest names to join the party.
Richard Bates Jr. Turns His Short Film into Something Much Bigger
Excision was the feature debut of writer and director Richard Bates Jr. It did not come out of nowhere. Bates first made Excision as a short film of about eighteen minutes in 2008, starring Tessa Ferrer as Pauline. The short played festivals in 2008 and 2009 and gained an enthusiastic following.
The feature expands that idea into a full character study. Bates kept the core of the short, a young woman obsessed with surgery, and built a whole world around her. He added the family, the school, the church, and the relationship with Grace that gives the story its emotional weight.
The finished film feels deeply personal. It does not look or sound like a typical studio horror movie. There are no cheap jump scares and no familiar formula. Instead, there is a distinct voice, a dark sense of humor, and a willingness to go places most horror films avoid.
Bates also clearly loves the movies that came before him. Critics spotted echoes of John Waters, David Lynch, and Lucky McKee's cult favorite May. Yet Excision never feels like a copy. It takes those influences and turns them into something new.
Bates went on to make Suburban Gothic, Trash Fire, Tone-Deaf, and King Knight. All share his taste for dark comedy and suburban misery. Excision remains the film that put him on the map.
The Bloodiest Parts May Be Inside Pauline’s Head
Much of the film's most extreme material happens in Pauline's imagination. Throughout the story, she drifts into vivid daydreams and fantasies. These scenes are where Bates truly lets loose.
The fantasy sequences look completely different from the rest of the movie. They are bright, staged, and almost glossy, like fashion photography crossed with a medical textbook. Pauline appears glamorous and confident in them, surrounded by blood, bodies, and surgical imagery.
These dreams mix medical horror with sexual imagery in ways that are deliberately shocking. They are uncomfortable, often grotesque, and sometimes oddly beautiful. They show us exactly how Pauline sees herself and the world, which is far more disturbing than anything she says out loud.
This review will not catalog every one of them. Part of their power comes from not knowing what you will see next. It is enough to say they earn the film its reputation, and they are not for the squeamish.
The contrast is what makes them work. Pauline's real life is drab and frustrating. Her inner world is lush, bloody, and in complete control. The gap between the two becomes one of the most unsettling things about the film.
Horror, Black Comedy, or Something Else?
Excision is very hard to put in a box. Video stores would have struggled to decide which shelf it belonged on.
Large parts of it are funny. Pauline's deadpan insults, her awkward encounters, and her clashes with the adults around her often play like a pitch black teen comedy. The dinner table scenes can be painfully hilarious.
Other parts are deliberately uncomfortable. The film lingers on bodily fluids, embarrassment, and awkward sexuality. It wants you to squirm, and it usually succeeds.
Then there is the horror. It creeps in slowly at first, mostly in the daydreams. As the story moves forward, the line between fantasy and reality starts to blur. By the final stretch, the film becomes, gut punching horror.
That shifting tone is a big part of what makes it special. You never quite know whether to laugh or wince. When the final act arrives, the earlier laughs suddenly look very different.
Why Excision Still Feels Like a Horror Sleeper
With a cast like this and a strong reception at Sundance, you might expect Excision to be famous. It is not. Outside of cult horror circles, many viewers have never heard of it.
There are a few reasons. The film received only a small theatrical release before arriving on Blu-ray and DVD in October 2012. It had little advertising. Its unusual mix of comedy and extreme imagery also made it hard to market.
Critics were generally kind. Rotten Tomatoes lists an 85 percent positive score from 27 critics. Even so, the film never broke through to mainstream audiences. It became a word of mouth discovery, passed between horror fans who wanted to share something different.
That is exactly why it is worth seeking out. Someone browsing the horror shelf for familiar titles could easily skip right past it. The cover makes it look like a quirky indie film. What is inside is far more memorable.
For collectors and curious viewers, that sleeper status makes it a great find. It is the kind of movie you recommend to a friend, then wait eagerly to hear what they thought of the ending.
Does Excision Still Work Today?
More than a decade later, the answer is a firm yes. The film has aged far better than many horror movies of its era.
The performances are the main reason. McCord's Pauline still feels fresh and fearless. Lords remains heartbreaking as Phyllis. The supporting cast still delivers smiles of recognition every time a new face appears.
The practical gore and makeup effects also hold up well. The fantasy scenes were shot digitally in a bold widescreen style, and their glossy look has not dated. If anything, the film's deliberate artificiality has made it feel more timeless.
The uncomfortable humor works too, though it will not be for everyone. Some jokes are cruel. Some scenes are designed to make you squirm. That is part of the film's identity, not a flaw.
It would be a mistake to judge Excision only by how much blood appears on screen. Its real power comes from character and tone. The gore is shocking, but the slow build toward the ending is what stays with you.
Who Should Watch Excision?
This film is a great fit for viewers who enjoy unusual psychological horror. If you like character driven stories that take their time, you will find a lot here.
Fans of body horror will appreciate its medical obsessions and grotesque fantasy scenes. Fans of black comedy will enjoy its sharp dialogue and awkward family dynamics. Lovers of cult cinema will have a blast spotting the famous faces.
It also suits viewers who appreciate films that are willing to become uncomfortable. Excision does not play it safe. It pushes boundaries and trusts its audience to keep up.
A word of warning, though. If you want a conventional slasher, this is not it. If you want nonstop gore from start to finish, you may find the first hour too slow. Excision is a very different animal, and it rewards patience more than bloodlust.
It is also strictly for adults. The film is unrated in the United States and carries strong sexual content and graphic imagery. Pick your viewing companions carefully.
Final Thoughts 4.5/5
This one earns a 4.5 out of 5 from Kilroy. Closing out this Excision 2012 review, the film earns its cult reputation through Pauline, not simply through gore.
AnnaLynne McCord gives a fearless performance that turns a deeply unpleasant character into someone you cannot stop watching. Traci Lords grounds the madness with real emotion. The parade of cult icons adds a layer of fun that few horror films can match.
It loses half a point for a few stretches that lean too hard on shock and some humor that will not land for everyone. Everything else works, especially the slow, disturbing build toward its unforgettable ending.
Excision is weird, uncomfortable, funny in places, and eventually horrifying. If you have somehow missed this one, keep it that way until you press Play.
