SYNOPSIS:
Tabitha. Shelby. Lisa. They're longtime friends on separate life paths. But they share a horrific destination when a seemingly innocent incident from their school days comes back to terrify them. Something--someone--wants payback: warped vengeance… mind-games vengeance… taunting, shredding, slashing vengeance. Inside a stonewalled chamber of prison cells and mechanisms of doom, the three women and other victims face a fierce fight to survive. Who lives? Who dies? It's all for someone's AMUSEMENT.
MOVIE REVIEW:
There's nothing amusing about this horror film, that was once slated for a theatrical release, before heading straight to DVD. I think anyone in the right frame of mind will be able to see through its lack of a coherent storyline even though it's a horror film, where cliches are bountiful, and filmmakers lacking in innovation will stick to formula, coupled with copious amounts of fake blood, mad men, plenty of scantily clad women, and gore.
In fact, this film felt like three short films being extrapolated into an 80 minute excuse of a feature, with 4 minutes worth of scrolling credits to give it a respectable 84 minute runtime. And within that 80 minutes, you'll probably find it more worthwhile to engage your own interest by counting the number of cliches, such as the mean looking trucker, talking to strangers, menacing looking puppet clowns, mutilated animals, and a creepy house that won't pass environmental inspection. And the mad man here is someone who'll find himself at home with villainous peers such as the ones in Valentine, and Prom Night.
So little girls be careful, because if horror scribes have their way in the real world, those nerdy boys whom you laugh at now, will suffer from damaged self-esteem, and snap. They'll become a recluse, before waiting until they're young adults to exact their vendetta. Which what is just about the back story that Jake Wade Wall can cook up in his design of The Laugh (Keir O'Donnell), whose name is as lame as his modus operandi, which is to kidnap ex-school friends Tabitha (Katheryn Winnick), Shelby (Laura Breckenridge) and Lisa (Jessica Lucas) and subject them to various tortures. And it's really a very clumsy way he went about doing just that, complete with gaping plot loopholes that you can fly a jumbo jet through.
It's not scary and it's not funny either, as in being so bad that it's laughable. It's so bad that you'll be left scratching your head how funding for this film was obtained, and whether anyone did their homework to check if it floats with the man on the street. If anything, this is one lesson that can be learnt by filmmakers everywhere, on how not to make a bad horror flick with zero substance and no redeeming factors. Not even recommended if you have spare time during lazy weekends.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
This DVD contains no extras.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
You gotta give credit when it's due, so you'd like to note that the visual transfer is of quality, especially for scenes in the dark which weak transfers usually get plagued by. Nothing in the film however that seemed capably of exploiting the audio transfer though.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Stefan Shih
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