John’s Horror Corner: The Price We Play (2022), basically the New Mexico organ-harvesting massacre.

MY CALL: The IMDB score is crap. But for real, gorehounds should give this flick a shot. MOVIES LIKE The Price We Play: As far as obscure Leatherface rip-offs go, this doesn’t measure up to The Hills Run Red (2009), but maybe more of a Doom Asylum (1987).

This movie starts out so weak that you may feel the wisest course of action is to turn it off. But, if you love a good goregasm, then you’d be wrong. Give it a chance…

After a botched pawn shop heist, Alex (Emile Hirsch; The Autopsy of Jane Doe, The Darkest Hour), Shane (Tanner Zagarino) and Cody (Stephen Dorff; Blade, Leatherface, The Gate, Feardotcom) get stranded with their hostage (Gigi Zumbado) in rural New Mexico. With the cops on their trail, they seek refuge at a farmhouse. The teenager (Tyler Sanders) on the property is nervous about helping them, and more nervous about when his grandfather gets home.

Snooping around the property, Alex finds an underground compound of sorts complete with a lab, prison cells, and disturbing children’s drawings. We quickly realize that Alex is a psychopathic loose cannon. But we also learn the real crazies in this movie are the organ-harvesting grandfather doctor (Vernon Wells; Commando, The Road Warrior, Weird Science) and his giant, disfigured daughter (Erika Ervin; Hemlock Grove, American Horror Story). She packs some serious Leatherface vibes, and becomes even more of a looker after a face full of acid makeover.

Graphic gunshot wound and medical/surgical gore are fleshy, grotesque, and complete with slimy sounds as wounds are probed and prodded. The anesthesia-less surgery may be tough to watch for some, and other horror violence is likewise brutal and graphic, especially the gas tank head-smush! And yet other head-splattering scenes as well. Yeah, this movie gets gross. We also have some fun with flesh-melting acid, and a goretastic constricting barbwire gag finale. There’s a lot of blood!

This flick just gets better and better, grosser and grosser as the run time continues until a truly batshit crazy finale. Director Ryûhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train, Versus, Azumi) had me worried at first. But I should’ve known he’d come through for us once the blood-spewing inertia kicks in.

No, this is not a good a horror film. But for gorehounds, this is definitely a low priority recommendation.