R, 1 hr. 31 min. Directed by: Jon Wright. Release Date: May 22, 2009. DVD Release Date: August 31, 2010.
Tormented
rode
in high on the coattails of the several UK-made horror films that I saw, and
generally liked over the course of 2011.
First, there was The Hole,
with Thora Birch and Keira Knightley. I
followed it up with Wilderness and Severance which were both conceptually
awesome… although I thought the latter was a little too politically motivated
for a horror flick. Tormented follows a pattern that I’m going to go out and say is
characteristically British, based on what I’ve seen of their horror films to
date: it starts at the ending, providing
you a one or two minute look into the aftermath before explaining how the
characters arrived at their predicament.
My gut reaction to this was fairly
positive, despite some pretty clear faults.
In some ways, this is likely a very UK reaction to wave of
tongue-in-cheek horror films of the 1990s that I love so much (even though
they’re terrible). I thought this was
fun, and filled with pretty people to help distract me from how bad the story
is. I also thought this had a kind of
cool, anti-bullying message… although I suspect that it wasn’t intentional, it
was just an easy vehicle to set up the motives for the film’s serial
slayer. Except for a few relatively
gruesome scenes, I thought this was light on the gore, which I always
appreciate, because gore isn’t generally done so well.
The characters are the traditional mix
of shallow teen “cliques” that you’d expect in any (American) high school, and
I would have thought the Brits would make for more… sophisticated fare, but I’m
guessing not. Either that, or the cast
wasn’t up to the sophistication you’d look for.
But then, I’ve seen enough UK films of late that make me think that they
aren’t all that different from the kids I see as I go about my life.
Unfortunately, when it came time for me
to actually think about the mechanics of this movie, it didn’t do so well. While the characters are made up of the
cliques I’d expect from a movie like this, they’re all basically caricatures of
those types of kids. None had anything
really unique about them, and I struggled to remember any of their names once I
turned the movie off. The cast was,
well, pretty terrible. I don’t actually
expect a whole lot from Alex Pettyfer, and in that he actually delivered, but I
was hoping a few other members of the cast might help pull his weight
along. They didn’t quite manage
that. The dialogue is pretty tacky, and
I’m wondering exactly who wrote this, because the slang and swearing seemed
very American, lacking any of the things I know Brits to actually say. I’m no expert, so I could be wrong, but there
wasn’t anything in there I would have expected to hear.
The story’s pretty silly, but I guess
that’s expected since this IS horror. I
don’t generally ask for genius, and I certainly wouldn’t have gotten it if I
had asked. When I take the high level
temperature of the movie, everything averages out to a meh. It’s terrible, but it managed to be mildly
entertaining. I don’t think I’d go out
of my way to watch it again, but if I happened to be flipping through the
channels and it was on, I might sit through it.
