Tarantino’s Western is coldblooded, too calculated to actually be considered chilling. In Tarantino’s territory the violence is perpetuated with flippancy. His characters don’t care about human life. And frankly, we can’t bring ourselves to care whether these characters live or die.

The Hateful Eight is not for the faint of heart. From its not-so-subtle references to racism to the gore and the violence, the film is a lot to take in. If you can stomach a brutal, no-holds-barred movie about post-Civil War America, this one must not be missed.

The premise of The Hateful Eight is similar to the filmmaker’s own Reservoir Dogs .

It is also similar in many ways to a lot of other films of different genres. But that’s Tarantino, a fan with a mental library of movie myths. And as always, he makes something original and wildly entertaining out of it.

Tarantino is an ace at using a repetitive question-and-answer format to build up menace and tension, but both qualities are in short supply in The Hateful Eight. Mistrust is spelled out loud and clear rather than felt, and when the bullets start to fly, the movie becomes a familiar bloodbath that is played for both shocks and laughs.