OMG Horror.com

A deadly Samoan curse is released after American tattoo artist Jake Sawyer (Jason Behr) accidentally slashes his hand with an antique tattooing instrument in The Tattooist, a New Zealand horror film that's so abysmal that we imagine most viewers won't be able to tolerate it's sloppy storytelling (it's hard to believe Jonathan King, the director and writer of Black Sheep, co-wrote this disastrous movie), complete lack of suspense or even remotely scary moments, and horrendous acting. There are so many ways The Tattooist could have taken its premise of killer tattoos and made it interesting. Regrettably, The Tattooist takes itself way too seriously and you get the impression from watching it that director Peter Burger didn't have a clear idea as to where he was going with the movie or what exactly he was trying to say.

Revenge of the Tattoos!
The film opens with a young boy getting caught by his father with a pentagram tattoo inked onto his forearm. As with many of the scenes in The Tattooist, this one has no real significance to the main story, other than delivering a cheap shock of showing the young protagonist squeal as his tattoo is viciously scrapped off his flesh with a dull knife. After the opening credits roll, the film fast forwards to the present, revealing that the boy has grown up to become a tattoo artist who eventually turns to conning his customers into believing that his tattoos hold healing powers.

One scene early on in the film exemplifies how laughably bad the movie is, and that's when a man hires Jake to drill a tattoo onto the chest of his dying, bedridden son who looks to be about 7 or 8 years old. At first, Jake refuses to do the job and tells the father "he needs a doctor." "No. He needs a tattoo," the father responds. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't contain any more absurd moments like this one that you can laugh at, and instead rapidly becomes a dreary wreck of a movie. If the film would have embraced its silly plot and taken a much more lighthearted approach to telling the story, like Black Sheep (another recent New Zealand horror flick), it almost certainly would have been more effective as a movie.

The Stink of Ink
If you're looking for some mindless gore, you're also going to walk away from The Tattooist feeling cheated as virtually 100% of the violence in the film is not exactly "bloody." Everyone who dies in the movie is someone who received one of the poisonous tattoos somewhere on their body. Once their tattoo actually kills them, the victim collapses and their tattoo bleeds out gallons of black ink. The Tattooist is rated-R, but it might as well be rated G because there's nothing even vaguely shocking about it.

Normally I wouldn't dream of giving away an ending if there was any redeeming value whatsoever to a film reviewed on this website. But in this special case, you're better off not seeing the movie. On top of everything else that this film fails miserably at, we don't even get the satisfaction of seeing the people responsible for all the dying happening in the movie get what they deserve. Numerous random people who just happened to want to get tattoos die in the film, yes, but nothing happens to villains other than a sort of slap on the wrist. Bah!

Terror Rating: 1 out of 5
Originality: 3 out of 5
Level of Gore: 1.5 out 5
Overall Rating: 1.5 out 5

Other Similar Recommendations: Anything other than The Tattooist.

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