HALLOWEEN BLOGATHON 2010, HOUR 21
Kill Theory
Written by Kelly C. Palmer
Directed by Chris Moore
Freddy...Daniel Franzese
Carlos...Theo Rossi
Brent...Teddy Dunn
Alex...Taryn Manning
Amber...Ryanne Duzich
Jennifer...Agnes Bruckner
In a typical slasher set-up, eight friends head to the rich kid's isolated vacation home for a weekend of drinking, pre-marital sex, and the usual blend of angsty asshole teenage debauchery. Little do they know that outside lurks a recently-released mental patient with a violent streak and a mind like a steel trap. And when it comes to mental patients, that is one dangerous combination.
Said mental patient (a Jigsaw meets Rusty Nail sort of fellow), who was once convicted of killing his three best friends in order to save his own life, has developed a theory--call it a kill theory--that when it comes down to it, anyone would be willing to do the same thing. These eight nubile young pretty people are going to serve as his guinea pigs, and he quickly lays down the ground rules, summed up thusly:
"You have the choice of ending someone else's life to save your own."
"Kill your friends...or die with them."
Admittedly, it's a deliciously demented premise. Any time the victim can become the villain, there's an opportunity for betrayal, bloodshed and psychological examination of the characters involved. What does it take to push an essentially innocent person over the edge? This isn't like the final scene in Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, where the survivors give into their primal instincts to defeat their pursuers, as there is at least some iota of honor to be found there. Here, they are forced to kill the ones they love in order to save themselves, which has the peculiar distinction of being both a sacrifice and an extremely greedy action.
Had Kill Theory taken its time to actually examine this a bit more in depth, it could have been a fascinating film. Instead, it only paints a picture with the widest of brush strokes and then gives in to frenetic Post-2K pacing without the slightest hint of subtlety--which is fine in its own right, and exactly what I was expecting, but not what I was hoping for.
A gory, flashy, stylish, smart-like and occasionally disturbing but ultimately empty examination, it does have the capacity to keep you entertained--in a guilty, dirty sort of way. And while that is more than can be said for a lot of flicks, every once and a while, a premise could be so much better if it attempted to do more than that.
Call me crazy. Just not to my face.
Although, I do have a theory....
2009
Rated R
85 Minutes
Color
English
United States
--J/Metro
