Movies: Tormented * *
(16, general release)
Friday May 22 2009
British horror movies have been particularly strong over the past few years (notably The Descent and Eden Lake), but this charmless, humourless effort is a lame attempt to make inroads into the American-dominated slasher-movie subgenre.
Tormented is a shameless pastiche of several moderate-to-much-better titles from the canon, but with a distinct Generation Twitter twist: think Scream if You Know What I Did in Skins on Friday the 13th Last Summer (indeed, several cast members are alumni of E4's underage sex/drink/ drug 'yoof' drama Skins). That should guarantee that Tormented finds a spotty, hormonal, broken-voiced audience that might revel, at least initially, in its extravagant but curiously scare-free violence.
The movie opens at the funeral of Darren Mullett (Calvin Dean), an overweight student at a posh secondary school who killed himself due to the bullying he suffered at the hands of the school's ruling clique of truly heinous cool kids.
When the goody-two-shoes head girl becomes involved with the gang, they all start receiving texts and messages from the deceased. And then they start being popped off, one by one, in a series of cartoonish, sub-Sam Raimi death sequences that are only in any way entertaining because the characters are so obnoxious.
Tormented ditches any attempt at mystery or suspense early on, which would be fine if someone had at least remembered to bring the funny along the way. Its relentless succession of gore-splattered set pieces quickly becomes tiresome, and its tone and outlook is so cynical and unpleasant that there is not a single character to root for. Tormented? Don't bother.
- Declan Cashin
