Rating: R | Runtime: 86 minutes
Release Date: January 10th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate / Grindstone Entertainment Group
Director(s): Ryûhei Kitamura
Writer(s): Christopher Jolley / Christopher Jolley and Ryûhei Kitamura (story)

You got yourself a regular little funhouse down here.

As Grandpa (Vernon Wells) always says: we must pay life’s cost with flesh. I wouldn’t be surprised if director Ryûhei Kitamura and screenwriter Christopher Jolley (who share story credit) thought up that line first and went backwards to make it work since The Price We Pay proves rather forgettable beyond the climactic exposition dump.

Before then it’s just Stephen Dorff’s ex-Ranger Cody trying to stop Emile Hirsch’s certifiably insane Alex from killing everyone who crosses their path during a pawn shop robbery. That set-up is such an afterthought that the film doesn’t even bother to provide context outside of “You know who we robbed!” and “You know who we’re working for!” since any off-screen identities will inevitably prove moot.

Why? Because nobody is leaving the farm Cody, Alex, Shane (Tanner Zagarino), and their unwitting hostage Grace (Gigi Zumbado) have stumbled onto during their getaway anytime soon. We (and Cody) know it as soon as we meet young Danny (Tyler Sanders) in the stables.

Where someone not paying attention would presume his obvious fear is a result of strangers who might do him harm being on the property, it’s not difficult to realize he’s actually scared of what will happen to them once Grandpa and Jodi (Erika Ervin) return. Anyone who’s seen a Kitamura film (The Midnight Meat Train, Downrange, etc.) should be prepared for the copious amounts of gore to come.

It would actually be enough to call this one a winner too if not for the first act’s dreadful dialogue. Hirsch is having fun delivering his lines, but I can’t say I was enjoying hearing them. Maybe I would have if the filmmakers leaned into that unearned stylistic choice to push things towards a comedic tone.

By playing everything straight, however, it comes off as cringy instead. And not in the good way since his Alex is supposed to be the loose cannon. We should fear him, not think of him as a joke. If he wasn’t first-billed, I would have expected Dorff to put a bullet in his head within five minutes. Alas, everyone gets to the lion’s den alive.

On a purely visceral level, the ensuing violence and bloody kills are effective. Add the loquacious pomp of a hubristic antagonist (Wells) and his formidable muscle (Ervin) and the aforementioned exposition dump entertains even as it confirms that nothing until then mattered.

Dorff and Zumbado do their best to try and make us care for their plight despite him being a criminal and she a barely two-dimensional lamb led to slaughter. We care enough to see where things go, but them ending up dead or alive is inconsequential since the gore is the star. I would have liked a story.

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Emile Hirsch in THE PRICE WE PAY; courtesy of Lionsgate.