Analysis
Scott Reynold's and his cast have all been a little quiet since their 1997 horror film The Ugly. Not that I'm saying that the film was the kiss of death for the crew but perhaps says more about the state of the New Zealand film industry from where this movie originated. The exception to this would perhaps be Production Designer Grant Major who's link with a certain Mr Peter Jackson through his 1996 film The Frighteners has ensured his place on the now legendary Lord of the Rings trilogy. This film follows Simon Cartwright as he attempts to reveal the reasons behind the brutal and unprovoked murders that he has committed since he was a teenager. It is Dr Shoemaker's job to pries out of Simon's head the rational relating to these incidents.

The film has a rather unique and subtle visual style which relies on the colour contrast between blue and red. In many scenes you will see the two colours utilised together almost as if no other colours exist. The two opposing colours seem almost to compete for your brains attention perhaps in a similar way in which Simon struggles between his good conscious (blue) and his evil conscious (red). There is also a deliberate avoidance of the colour red when it comes to the blood with every violent scene seeing black juice instead of the normal crimson stuff.

The film does have it's slow parts with dialogue heavy scenes attempting to explain the inner workings of Simon's mind and as such we get a lot of one-on-one conversations between Simon and Dr. Shoemaker. These do get a little boring to watch after a while whilst awaiting the next killing. The tension does finally climax during one of their sessions toward the end of the film but by then you might have reached for the controls. It must be said that the visitors that reveal themselves to Simon are fantastic and very creepy but they are so tragically underused that I would quite like to see them return in a movie of there own perhaps in a Hellraiser kind of way.

One moment that hit my funny bone amongst all the seriousness of the movies grim plot was the story about the Russian Olympic squad whom Simon thought were out to kill him. When the hospital staff supplied him with a television so that he could pick out the supposed assassins it came to light that Simon had made it all up just because he wanted to watch the diving.....well it made me laugh!

Key Area	Rating (out of 5)	Comment
Action	None	There is no traditional action of note.
Thrills/ Tension		Not as scary as it should have been. The visitors that appear in Simons mind are underused and should have been exploited more.
Violence/ Gore		Simon gets beaten a lot by his insane mother and as such causes him to go banana's with a cut throat razor. A lot of the scenes are seen as throat cuttings but never seem to be over the top especially as the blood is black!
Bare Flesh	None	Trust me, you wouldn't want to see any of the flesh after our Simon has finished with his victims.
Plot		An uninspiring plot that ambles along at a lazy pace. It is however executed with enough flair to make it intriguing, but not very.

Verdict If like me you saw clips of this film as part of the excellent Boogeymen DVD or have seen production stills of the ghostly visitors, then you might have been mislead like I was. This is one of those films that, when seen briefly, looks interesting enough but looks can be deceiving. Although the film is far from garbage with a capable cast and interesting visual style it just plays out too slow for my liking. It is however worth seeing for one reason only and that is the damn eire apparitions that appear to Simon but no sooner do they appear, the film ends.

Movie Pictures (Click picture to enlarge)