Analysis
I was looking forward to this movie. It was British. It was horror. It wasn’t filled with American teens running from a man with a knife/hook/halibut (I’m sure if you look there’ll be one out there (possibly on this site)). I must tell you that on the whole, I wasn’t disappointed.

The film starts with the eight main characters (most of which live in the same building) going out for a night of fun and excess at a local club. When things start to get stagnant they look for another way to amuse themselves. The idea of using a ouija board is put forward and they soon find themselves off in a back room with a home made board (a piece of glass and some paper with letters drawn on) and an upturned glass.

Out of the friends only one is a true believer, the others are just after a laugh. She lays down a couple of ground rules – the most important of which is that they touch the glass with one finger and do not remove it until she says that everything is over. If anyone withdraws too quickly (don’t you just hate it when that happens) the ‘door’ that opens that lets the spirit in to our world will close and it will be trapped on this side. The other seven don’t take things too seriously until the glass starts moving and spelling out the words ‘ALL DIE’. Go on, guess what happens next…

The death starts.

All of the killing in the film is understated. There are no scenes of graphic violence, no heads exploding or entrails trailing. There is plenty of blood but not enough to make the film look like it’s making up in plasma what it lacks in plot. The bodies look convincing, the makeup does make them seem as if they died in a particularly nasty way, but does not go overboard and ruin the subtle (for the most part) way they met their grizzly end.

Oh, and there’s a landlord with a slightly over active interest in one of his main cast tenants.

The film did not concentrate on big CGI effects, or big payroll actors, but it managed to do what it set out to. There was tension, shocks and an ending (notice the lack of the words ‘surprise’ and ‘twist’) and this was were I felt it fumbled. I’m not saying that the end of the film ruined it, but I was hoping for something more of a climax (there I go again).

People will watch this film and use words like “cliché’ and “seen it all before”. No film is truly original, but this one uses the classic recipe well.

Key Area	Rating (out of 5)	Comment
Action		Very little action of the usual variety. Only one fight to talk of. This film is not about action though.
Thrills/ Tension		Tensioned like a piano wire it isn’t. Tensioned like overcooked spaghetti it certainly isn’t either. Fortunately it falls towards the better end of this bracket.
Violence/ Gore		The deaths are violent but you only really see the results, not usually the whole act in detail. The makeup conveys the gruesomeness of the deaths well.
Bare Flesh	NONE	You get to see an ankle.
Plot		Reasonably well thought out. Could have expanded on the ending.

Verdict I liked it and I would watch it again. We should support British films that don’t have Hugh Grant in them. If you like the genre then you could do a lot worse. There have been a lot of big budget pull-out-all-the-stops, soak-everyone-in-blood, get-the-kid-to-save-the-day films, which despite the hype and money, really aren’t that good. This isn’t one of them. It keeps you guessing and involved. I know that not everyone will agree with this, but if you don’t then you are just plain WRONG. My only real criticism, apart from the slightly dodgy ending (only slightly though) is that there is an American in it. Don’t go all fire and brimstone on me, I’m not against Americans at all (well, not all of them). Some of the greatest films ever I believe have Americans in them. It’s just that in this film, I feel that the American is a token effort to appeal to everyone on the other side of the pond. Is that just me being cynical? Give it a chance.

How far would you go for the ultimate buzz?