Another day, another horror movie where teenagers are killed off, in no particular inventive way whatsoever.
Firstly, this film is exactly what it says. The tag line of "If you don't send it on, you die", should give you enough of a clue as to how bad this film is. And that is probably one of the wittier lines 'Chain Letter' has produced.
Everything about this film was bad. The concept, that not sending on a chain letter will have some manic, chain/axe wielding nutter chasing after you, tracking your movements through GPS and hacking into your computer to watch you through your own web cam (despite the fact that the chain letter in that particular case was received on a phone and at no point on the computer in question), was pushing it, to say the least, but if it had been well plotted, written and acted it could just have made it. Unfortunately, it was none of these. The writing was terrible and whenever there was a 'reveal' (not very often, I might add), the writers dumbed down this film so much that they had to literally spell out every last thing.
With the exception of Nikki Reed, who played Jessie, the film featured some pretty poor acting. And the plot holes and ridiculous inconsistencies and errors made this teen-gets-killed worse than many of its counterparts.
For example - the first death. A body is that badly mutilated, by a killer we have no trace of, yet it is released to be buried 2 days afterwards? No way would that ever happen. Also, the police would not interrogate people at the actual funeral. I don't know if this film was created specifically for morons, but if not, please credit your audience with a little more intelligence than that.
The second death, where the engine falls on Dante - how would the police know that was murder on the same day? The guy said he fixed it onto the ceiling himself, why on earth would the police assume someone murdered him, rather than the more obvious solution of the engine falling because it wasn't affixed properly?
The third death, where the killer bursts through a skylight (!) - by this stage 3/4 people have been killed and the police are assuming it's the same killer. His own sister has been killed, in the house. Disregarding the fact that that house would be a crime scene just one day on, where the hell are the kids parents? They've just lost a daughter and yet someone can make all the commotion they like, climbing onto a roof and smashing through a skylight to drag their son through it, and the parents do not hear a single thing. Unbelievable. Plus, why have the storyline building up to something about an anti-technology cult, which would have been quite interesting, and then never explore it in any depth?
There are so many more annoying, ridiculous things about this movie but it would take me all night to list them all.
Overall, the shock moments were cheap and predictable, and didn't make me jump once. The storyline was full of plot holes big enough to fit on ocean liner through, the kills were uninventive and not even particularly gory, and when there would have been gore, the camera cut away! The writing was stilted, the acting was wooden and the mistakes drove me mad.
The single payoff came right at the end, and if I hadn't seen it coming would have been the best bit of the film. Seriously, don't bother. 2/10, because sadly, I have seen (slightly) worse.
Firstly, this film is exactly what it says. The tag line of "If you don't send it on, you die", should give you enough of a clue as to how bad this film is. And that is probably one of the wittier lines 'Chain Letter' has produced.
Everything about this film was bad. The concept, that not sending on a chain letter will have some manic, chain/axe wielding nutter chasing after you, tracking your movements through GPS and hacking into your computer to watch you through your own web cam (despite the fact that the chain letter in that particular case was received on a phone and at no point on the computer in question), was pushing it, to say the least, but if it had been well plotted, written and acted it could just have made it. Unfortunately, it was none of these. The writing was terrible and whenever there was a 'reveal' (not very often, I might add), the writers dumbed down this film so much that they had to literally spell out every last thing.
With the exception of Nikki Reed, who played Jessie, the film featured some pretty poor acting. And the plot holes and ridiculous inconsistencies and errors made this teen-gets-killed worse than many of its counterparts.
For example - the first death. A body is that badly mutilated, by a killer we have no trace of, yet it is released to be buried 2 days afterwards? No way would that ever happen. Also, the police would not interrogate people at the actual funeral. I don't know if this film was created specifically for morons, but if not, please credit your audience with a little more intelligence than that.
The second death, where the engine falls on Dante - how would the police know that was murder on the same day? The guy said he fixed it onto the ceiling himself, why on earth would the police assume someone murdered him, rather than the more obvious solution of the engine falling because it wasn't affixed properly?
The third death, where the killer bursts through a skylight (!) - by this stage 3/4 people have been killed and the police are assuming it's the same killer. His own sister has been killed, in the house. Disregarding the fact that that house would be a crime scene just one day on, where the hell are the kids parents? They've just lost a daughter and yet someone can make all the commotion they like, climbing onto a roof and smashing through a skylight to drag their son through it, and the parents do not hear a single thing. Unbelievable. Plus, why have the storyline building up to something about an anti-technology cult, which would have been quite interesting, and then never explore it in any depth?
There are so many more annoying, ridiculous things about this movie but it would take me all night to list them all.
Overall, the shock moments were cheap and predictable, and didn't make me jump once. The storyline was full of plot holes big enough to fit on ocean liner through, the kills were uninventive and not even particularly gory, and when there would have been gore, the camera cut away! The writing was stilted, the acting was wooden and the mistakes drove me mad.
The single payoff came right at the end, and if I hadn't seen it coming would have been the best bit of the film. Seriously, don't bother. 2/10, because sadly, I have seen (slightly) worse.