Get ready to spook and gore yourself silly – Tom Leins reviews the latest horror DVDs
Sex, Leins & Videotape #61: Halloween comes early on D+CFilm, as Tom Leins hacks his way through the latest horror DVDs
US director Adam Green has become a cult figure in horror circles thanks to the well-received double whammy of Hatchet and Spiral. His latest movie, Frozen (Momentum) sees him explore subtler -but no less horrific -territory, with its story about a trio of 20-somethings whose idyllic snowboarding trip degenerates into a sub-zero nightmare when their ski-lift grinds to a halt at dusk, leaving them dangling far above the snow.
With the ski resort closed until the following weekend, and the temperature dropping all the time, the group are forced into action. But can they negotiate a way down from their perilous position before they are ravaged by frostbite?
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With a smart script, naturalistic performances from the three leads -Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers and Emma Bell -and a variety of all-too-real horrors, Frozen is an unexpectedly engrossing thriller. The plot may not sound like the most exciting prospect of the week, but few movies in recent memory have dredged up this kind of sustained stomach-churning tension. In fact, Frozen feels more like a snow-bound version of the harrowing deep-sea survival movie Open Water than any recent horror flick. Frozen is a nuanced, well-directed movie and suggests that a bright future awaits director Adam Green -if he can tear himself away from the Hatchet franchise -which is rumoured to be expanding to four movies! Regardless, Frozen is chilling -in both senses of the word. Impressive stuff.
Written and directed by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton -the duo responsible for Saw IV, V and VI –The Collector (Icon) is a macabre thriller about a reformed burglar who gets unwittingly trapped inside a booby-trapped house he is trying to rob. Handyman Arkin (Josh Sewart) is forced to begrudgingly embrace the lifestyle he has long since abandoned in order to pay off his ex-wife’s loan shark at short notice. After targeting the family home belonging to a wealthy jeweller that he has been working for, Arkin discovers that he is not alone in the house. The family -who he had believed were on vacation -are being held captive by a sadistic degenerate in a gimp mask. And what’s worse, the freak has redecorated the building with a series of increasingly nasty booby-traps. Torn between escaping from the hell-house and rescuing the family’s young daughter, Arkin takes on the maniac in a bloody game of cat and mouse.
Effectively an unholy hybrid of Saw, Panic Room and Home Alone(!), The Collector is aimed squarely at fans of the first film, and the horrors being perpetrated by the man known only as the Collector are definitely not for viewers of a squeamish disposition. Inevitably, what begins as a fiendishly entertaining spectacle becomes gradually less clever and more horrific as it progresses, with anti-hero Arkin offering the only glimmer of hope. Fans of the sub-genre dubiously referred to as Torture Porn will adore it, but anyone else should prepare themselves for a truly traumatic experience. Approach with caution.
Psychological horror movie Psych 9 (Universal/Indi Vision) unfolds at an abandoned hospital in a neighbourhood that has been blighted by a spate of violent killings. Roslyn (Sara Foster) is a disturbed woman, visibly distressed by some unknown trauma in her past. Given a job sorting out files at the soon-to-be-closed hospital, Roslyn is initially content with the peace and quiet offered by the decrepit building. However, it isn’t long before she starts to experience a succession of strange events that she believes are connected to the Night Hawk murders.
Novice filmmaker Andrew Shortell displays a firm grasp of claustrophobic horror tricks, and Psych 9 is stylized and menacing throughout. Although the carefully constructed narrative unravels during the second half of the movie, Psych 9 is an interesting curio, and supporting roles for veteran character actors like Cary Elwes and Michael Biehn give the film a reassuringly solid feel. It may be curiously old-fashioned compared to the new-fangled Torture Porn reviewed elsewhere on this page, but Psych 9 is an effective chiller nevertheless. If you fancy tracking down a copy, Psych 9 is exclusively available in branches of Asda nationwide. So, for any local readers, that means paying a visit to Newton Abbot where you may well experience some psychological horrors of your own!
Bringing up the rear this week is The Tortured (E1 Entertainment), a clumsy revenge thriller bankrolled by some of the producers associated with -guess what -the Saw franchise! Former pin-ups Jesse Metcalfe and Erika Christensen star as doting parents Craig and Elise, whose young son is kidnapped and mutilated by a demented sex offender played by horror veteran Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects etc). Believing that the US criminal justice system won’t adequately punish the pervert for his crimes, Craig and Elise take the law into their own hands, ambush the prison van and whisk the man to a rural cottage where they subject him to a variety of medically inventive torture techniques.
Witnessing a murderous paedophile getting violently tortured by grieving parents might be someone’s idea of a good time, but it sure isn’t mine. Without the inventive streak of a movie like The Collector (see above), The Tortured just feels sluggish and dim-witted. The climactic twist is bizarre enough to make you sit up and take notice, but the damage has already been done by then. If you want to watch a grisly revenge movie with a Saw connection, go for Death Sentence, the bloodthirsty (not to mention underrated) Kevin Bacon movie directed by James Wan (the director of the first and best Saw movie). All in all, a torturous viewing experience -for all the wrong reasons.
- Interview: Billy O’Brien and William Todd-Jones - March 2, 2017
- The Childhood of a Leader: the birth of a terrifying ego - February 10, 2017
- Hold your breath: Don’t Breathe, and more reviews - January 26, 2017
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