THE CHOKE (2004)

Marketing people, don’t you just love em! You have to hand it to some of these low budget film distributors as they sure know how to design an eye popping sleeve for their DVD releases. It matters not a jot that the image they are selling has absolutely no bearing on the film itself (i.e. the important bit) just as long as you pick up the case and give it some eye time. The important part is the quality of the production, but these guys know their audience and by sticking either a cool monster, scantily clad chick or, in this case a gawping ‘Leatherface’ style human mask on the cover, genre fans will start to circle. Thing is, these same fans wisely dwell on sites like this one, so word soon gets around about what’s hot and what’s not. So, that pretty much sums up our latest review for the The Choke, a film which catches the eye, but fails to deliver on the promise of its great box art.
The film throws together an odd group of teen’s who, collectively make up the rock band The Choke. On the eve of their final gig within the bowls of the old meat-packing plant which is now Club 905, things take a dark turn as the group find themselves trapped inside the decrepit structure. Tensions begin to mount and old wounds are re-opened, but as the bickering within the group intensifies, the discovery of a slaughtered female sends the captives into a desperate panic in an attempt to find a way to the outside world before they become the next victim of a deadly killer.

I never really expected much from this low budget horror, nothing personnel, but I’ve seen so many of these teen slashers to know not to get over excited by cover slogan’s such as “Don’t move, Don’t breathe, They’ll find you”. Get past the silly sales gimmicks and into the film proper and you will find a mixed bag of tired clichés and a story which does little to either inspire or frighten the audience beyond a few decent looking moments of splatter. The fresh cast did a pretty decent job of portraying the cannon fodder for the films killer, but its fair to say that some roles where written way more interestingly than others but plaudits have to go to Tom Olson for his part as Nancy Boy the films comic relief who is actually amusing rather than just plain annoying. It’s also nice to see the girls giving it some for a change and despite the films god awful Goth character ‘London’, Brooke Bailey still manages a decent turn as does the super sexy Bee Simonds as cheerleader Starr. Jonesy, the films little Miss sensible played by Wonder Russell gets the lions share of screen time out of our ladies, and she also does a reasonable job with the limited tools at her disposal.
Like so many films in the serial killer subgenre, the audience never truly knows who the perpetrator of the gruesome crime is until the very end (that’s sort of the point!), but most seasoned horror freaks will be able to have a bloody good guess. But whilst everyone waits patiently for the big reveal, it’s important to keep the film driving along by dropping red hearings and false leads to engage the viewer. This is one area that The Choke co-writers Jessica Dolan and Susannah Lowber have succeeded with, as several members of the group could conceivably have the motive to hack the others to pieces but nothing is given away until the band members dwindle down in numbers. So many films fail when it comes to the subtle mysteries of the plot and end up hamming the whole affair with clumsy reactions and overly confusing dialogue in an attempt to throw the viewer of kilter. So the story is weak, but clearly it’s not all bad, and to add to my previous compliment, some of the technical values on display are pretty competent also. The abandoned meat packing plant/night club location used for the majority of the films shoot isn’t overly charismatic with many of the rooms looking decidedly similar and/or plain, but the crew have made the best of a bad job by adding a little flair to the visuals which, bearing in mind the relative feature inexperience of cinematographer Douglas Cheney, is a great achievement employing some interesting angles to heighten the slender atmosphere. The lighting and editing were also admirably executed in an attempt to raise the story to a passable level. I really wanted to round out the review by saying something witty like “ I’m not sure about The Choke, it’s more of a gag!”, but the film isn’t really all that terrible, it just has a lazy story which, given the level of talent on board, should have been so much more.

Velocity Home Entertainments DVD presentation is visually pleasing both for its great cover art work (which I won’t go in to again) and the feature presentation quality. The 16:9 anamorphic widescreen image is pretty solid with only the odd contrast issue during some of the shadowy moments (of which there are quite a few). The DD5.1 sound track is rambunctious especially when blasting punk rock at you from every angel but there is a 2.0 stereo option if you find the heavy metal all too much. On the special features front you get a revealing and amusing commentary with the films director, producer and both co-writers. There is an interesting 16 minute feature which opens like a rockumentary with cast members remaining in character to try and promote the doomed Club 905 and look back at the 'history' of the band. Its actually an extremely entertaining intro to the film which contains some genuinely funny moments, but it does give away a lot about the films deaths, so best to avoid watching this one before the film despite it ranking higher for entertainment value. To round things off, there are also a couple of trailers for other Velocity releases including The Choke.