Hacked: A Double Entendre of Rage-Fueled Karma review

By Mark Young

Lets face it, a title like this would put the filmmakers up against from the very start. Its promising a lot and possibly setting your expectations up to fail. Hacked is based on actual true events that Director Shane Brady and Producer Emily Zercher experienced and from a personal perspective its got to be up there with all-time worst life experiences. The premise is this: The Chameleon targets the Rumble family and steals everything. The police are powerless to help, the banks less than useless. All that is left their personal drive for revenge. 

Starting at the point where they have already captured and are indeed torturing the elusive Villain, that dark, running on a knife edge of what is darkly humorous and what isn’t is up there on the screen from the get-go. The players are introduced, the context behind it and then a note that the ‘first 10 minutes are based on true events’  and that the remainder is a work of fiction. I’m assuming that they included the second note as a just in case you didn’t understand. Those opening moments where everything goes bad is treated with the right amount of ‘yep, we couldn’t believe this either’ or shows just how truly alone you are when things go south.

That they have managed to make a film out of this is truly impressive, one that is a literal fever-dream of incredible scenarios (and Santa) is something else. If you imagine a film that feels like it is the very essence of seat of the pants filmmaking, where there is a manic energy right in front of your face. I think that you have to come into this with the right frame of mind and just roll with this. They have attempted to make light of something that must have been truly devastating at the time and have come out with a film that borders on the insane and maintains that level of energy right through. It helps that everyone involved is playing it with a straight bat, there are no winks to the camera it’s just full on drive that should be applauded. It’s a great film, living up to the promise of its title and if you are in the mood to see karma in action (including Santa) then give this a bash.