Welcome to Vilnius — Population: Idiots
Every year, a horror movie comes along that feels less like a film and more like a dare. Parlor (also known as Anarchy Parlor or Killer Ink, depending on which regret pile you pulled it from) is that movie for 2014 — a bloody mess so confused about what it wants to be that it ends up being none of those things.
Directed by Devon Downs and Kenny Gage, Parlor is a 20-day Lithuanian fever dream about a group of horny American tourists who learn the hard way that getting a tattoo abroad is about as safe as swimming with leeches in Chernobyl. It’s a movie that mistakes gore for substance, sleaze for style, and Robert LaSardo’s tattoos for character development.
Plot: Hostel Meets Pinterest Board
The setup is classic “college kids abroad” horror, but Parlor manages to make it sound like a tourism ad written by Satan. Six friends — Amy, Brock, Jesse, Stephanie, Kevin, and Kelly — head to Lithuania for reasons that the script wisely doesn’t explain. Maybe they just typed “cheapest flights in Europe” into Google and clicked the first result.
After a few minutes of party montages that look like they were shot by a drunk GoPro, Brock meets Uta, a tattoo artist’s apprentice who has all the sexual subtlety of a sledgehammer and a vague Eastern European accent that sounds like she learned English from an IKEA instruction manual.
Brock convinces Amy to come along for moral support, because nothing says “romantic vacation” like watching your friend get a questionable tattoo from a woman who lives in a basement that screams “human trafficking headquarters.”
Once they arrive at the titular parlor, we meet The Artist — Robert LaSardo, whose career is roughly 70% tattoos and 30% glaring meaningfully at people. He immediately drugs Amy’s drink, which in this movie is considered flirting. Brock, meanwhile, gets seduced, stabbed, and skinned by Uta, because apparently Lithuania has very loose customer service laws.
When Amy wakes up, she discovers The Artist has turned Brock’s back into an actual canvas. It’s the kind of scene that should be disturbing, but by this point you’re too numb to care. It’s not terrifying — it’s just gross and boring.
Meanwhile, their remaining friends realize the lovebirds have vanished and decide to investigate by doing absolutely everything wrong. Jesse, the walking embodiment of Red Bull and misogyny, picks fights with local teens for no reason. Kelly, the only person with a functioning brain, notices that one of the tattoos hanging in The Artist’s shop looks suspiciously like Brock’s. Congratulations, Kelly — you win the “first person to figure out the obvious” award. Sadly, she doesn’t live long enough to collect it.
Characters: You’ll Forget Them Before They Die
The six main characters can be summarized as follows:
-
Amy (Tiffany DeMarco): Final girl with zero agency. Spends half the film unconscious and the other half screaming.
-
Brock (Ben Whalen): Human slab of meat. Dies early but not nearly early enough.
-
Jesse (Jordan James Smith): Douchebag turned plot twist. Because nothing says “shock” like revealing the jerk was in on it the whole time.
-
Stephanie (Beth Humphreys): Has a birthmark, which apparently makes her skin “impure.” That’s not a metaphor — that’s just this movie’s idea of world-building.
-
Kelly (Claire Garvey): Smart but doomed. Horror movie law.
-
Kevin (Anthony Del Negro): Exists solely to be tortured and forgotten.
Then there’s Uta (Sara Fabel), the sadistic apprentice who alternates between slicing people open and practicing her smolder for the camera. She’s like a Hot Topic manager with access to surgical tools.
And finally, The Artist, played by Robert LaSardo — the film’s one semi-professional actor, here to mumble philosophical nonsense about “art” and “the soul of pain.” He treats skinning people like a TED Talk: “The human body is a canvas, and pain is the brush.” Okay, Picasso, maybe focus less on your monologue and more on not getting your client’s blood on your floor tiles.
Tone: Edgy, but Like, 2002 Edgy
Parlor clearly wants to be Hostel meets Saw, but instead feels like CSI: Spring Break. It’s violent without being shocking, sleazy without being sexy, and self-serious in the way only amateur horror can be.
Every frame screams, “We’re dark and gritty!” while also looking like it was lit by a tanning bed. The soundtrack is pure “2000s horror DVD bargain bin” — industrial metal riffs that sound like they were downloaded from LimeWire in 2006.
There’s no tension because the movie telegraphs every single death. You can practically hear the director whisper, “Cue torture now,” before every kill. And yet, somehow, despite all the blood and nudity, the film manages to be aggressively boring — a rare feat in horror cinema.
Visuals: Tattoo You, Torture Me
You’d think a movie set in a tattoo parlor would have some visual flair, but Parlor’s cinematography looks like someone smeared Vaseline on the lens and called it “art.” The color palette is 50 shades of sickly yellow, which I assume is meant to convey “Eastern European grime” but mostly just looks like food poisoning.
The gore effects range from mildly impressive to “did they just use barbecue sauce?” There are flayed backs, sliced torsos, and plenty of screaming, but none of it lands because it’s so cartoonishly overdone.
And then there’s the final act — where Amy, now fully brainwashed, kills Uta and Jesse before joining The Artist as his new apprentice. The scene should be chilling; instead, it plays like a weird recruitment video for a skin-care pyramid scheme.
Writing: Tattoo Philosophy 101
The script feels like it was written by people who once saw a tattoo documentary and thought, “What if we added murder?” Characters spout pseudo-intellectual nonsense like, “Pain reveals truth” and “Art demands sacrifice,” while the audience wonders if anyone proofread this thing.
The dialogue is a masterclass in unintentional comedy. My personal favorite is when The Artist gravely says, “Your skin tells a story,” right before carving someone’s back open. Yeah, that story is “call the police.”
Jesse’s heel-turn as a member of the Cuzas family — the lineage behind this human-skin art tradition — is the kind of twist that makes you wish you had been flayed instead. Apparently, his plan was to sacrifice one friend but “not all of them,” which is the serial killer equivalent of “I only cheated emotionally.”
Performances: The Art of Not Acting
Robert LaSardo gives the film’s best performance, which isn’t saying much — it’s like being the least drunk person at a frat party. His trademark menace and ink-covered look carry some scenes, but even he seems to know this movie is beneath him.
The rest of the cast flounders in a sea of bad direction and worse dialogue. Amy’s emotional breakdowns are as convincing as a reality show audition tape. Jesse oscillates between “douchey tourist” and “cult member” with the grace of a malfunctioning Roomba. Uta’s performance, meanwhile, could charitably be described as “feral mime.”
Ending: The Apprentice of Awful
By the time the credits roll, Amy has taken over as The Artist’s new disciple, presumably to keep the Cuzas family tradition alive. The movie clearly thinks this is a powerful, full-circle moment. In reality, it’s just the filmmakers saying, “Hey, maybe we’ll get a sequel!” Spoiler alert: they didn’t.
Final Thoughts: Bad Ink, Worse Ideas
Parlor is the cinematic equivalent of a regrettable tattoo — painful, unnecessary, and impossible to fully remove from your memory. It’s a movie that mistakes cruelty for creativity and confusion for complexity.
If you ever wanted to watch a film where college kids die one by one in between lectures about the artistic value of flaying, this is technically that movie. For everyone else, it’s a 90-minute PSA about why you should never trust anyone who offers you a free tattoo in a basement.
Final Verdict:
⭐️ out of 5.
A tattoo-themed horror film that’s all pain and no gain. The only thing truly getting skinned alive here is your patience. Don’t watch it — just get an actual tattoo instead. It’ll hurt less and look better.
