Tormented **
Head girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton) delivers a eulogy at the funeral of Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean), a schoolmate who has just committed suicide, she was unaware of who he was. After the service Justine is invited to a party by Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas), one of the ‘cool crowd’ from the school. The crowd are led by sociopath Bradley (Alex Pettyfer) and his bitchy girlfriend Natasha (April Pearson). At the party each member of the group start to get text messages from Mullets mobile phone, they assume that one of the other school nerds is sending them…
Mullets only real friend, Jason (Olly Alexander) is picked on mercilessly by the group as they assume he’s behind the text messages, he’s not.
One at a time the group are killed by an unknown assailant; the first one to die is Jez (Ben Hughes) the party DJ, a try-hard faux gantsa, I was pleased to see him go. I was pleased to see most of them get killed actually as they are a horrible group of kids.
Each of the students who are killed believe that they can see Mullet in windows and mirrors prior to eventually dying. Who kills them? Is it Mullet returned from the grave, his nerdy friends or someone in the guise of Mullet..? Justine she tries to decipher who’s behind the murders; and why Mullet killed himself, is her new boyfriend Alexis partly responsible?
Some of the deaths include a stake through the heart, head impaled on an iron railing, drowning, decapitation by shovel, hands cut off by a paper guillotine and screwdriver to the hand and neck. They’re done fairly well apart from the impaling scene… bad CGI, my pet hate in horror movies.
The story starts out well enough but descends into predictability fairly quickly. There’s a ‘twist’ that’s telegraphed miles in advance which is a shame as it could have been a pretty good little horror thriller, it’s not. The acting varies with only Alex Pettyfer standing out as a potential star.
The opening titles are well designed and add a nice touch to an otherwise average movie.
SPOILER ALERT. Its obvious early on that Mullet has returned from the dead and that Justine is going to end up taking the blame. The movie tries to give a clue at the end that it may be Justine but it’s not smart enough to pull it off. After the credits start to roll there’s a nice little gag where they show the schools thuggish physical education teacher about to get his comeuppance at the hands of Mullet.
Quality: 2 out of 5 stars (well made on a low budget)
Any good: 2 out of 5 stars (could have been better)
socialpsychol 