Here’s a pleasant surprise continuing the run of stand-out British horror films of the past few years (it’s OK, SPIRIT TRAP, we haven’t forgotten how shit you were). It’s a brisk, funny, riotously mean-spirited British taken on 80’s American supernatural slasher flicks, heavily indebted to the forgotten SLAUGHTER HIGH (which was actually UK-made but pretended to be American) and anything that followed closely in the footsteps of modern genre classic CARRIE.
Although the pacing is sometimes a little quirky (the deaths are largely crammed into the second half, and a couple of overlong sex scenes intrude on the suspense), TORMENTED gets funnier and sicker as it goes along, paying off with a sour punch line – possibly nicked from the underrated INTRUDER – and a hilarious throwaway gag that interrupts the end credits.
Slickly done on a low budget with great bloody FX work by Paul Hyett (the UK’s go-to guy for gore from THE DESCENT onwards), this flick really scores in its sarcastic, broad (yet dismayingly accurate) portrait of British high school life. The movie has a lot of fun with stereotypes usually found in U.S. high school films, from the bushy-haired geek to dumb, hot headed sports guys to some particularly hilarious, OTT Goths (the film’s biggest laugh comes from the names of the bands they listen to, especially Crying While Wanking).
The adults are amusingly ineffectual : headmaster Peter Armory’s solution to his school’s severe bullying problem is to erect a banner denouncing it, and there’s a bizarre pair of saucy older teachers, one of them played by eternally peculiar Sandra Dickinson. Although TORMENTED paints many of its characters in broad, comic strokes, there’s a grit under the humor that gives it a disarming authenticity.
Fat, asthmatic, much-persecuted Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean), unaffectionately nicknamed Shrek by seemingly the entire school, is dead at the outset of the story : his solution to the treatment he suffered every day was to take his own life. The film doesn’t’t explain how, but now he’s back from the dead to kill those who were mean to him and also to mooch a little bit more over the snooty but (relatively) sensitive head girl (Tuppence Middleton) he loved. She never even knew he existed while he was alive, and, now that he’s returned from the grave, is preoccupied with romancing an adolescent Hugh Grant-type essayed by Dimitri Leonidas.
TORMENTED vividly captures the bitchiness, violence and cruelty routinely found in your average high school. Thanks to some savvy casting choices, there’s a diverse ensemble of teenagers on screen whom you can’t wait to die in a horrible fashion. Seldom has there been such a credibly loathsome bunch of young folks in a horror movie. Their dialogue is convincingly sharp-tongued, crude and often laugh-out-loud funny.
TORMENTED particularly delivers in its murder scenes. “Mullet” is an unusual and surprisingly effective figure of fear : silent, save for the repetitive wheeze from his condition, and intimidating in his bulk. The movie’s skewed tone – half serious, half flippant – is reinforced by his presence, with a belly-flop swimming pool death scene awkwardly funny and disturbing at the same time.
When the movie really gets going, prepare for a bravura decapitation, a gag involving a ripped-off cock still encased in a condom, a TENEBRAE-inspired hand-lopping with significant arterial spray (capped by the ever-fun sight of a girl with no hands trying to make a telephone call) and a really grim visualization of that old exam-time urban legend about the kid who a pencil up each nostril and slammed his head down hard on to his desk. Director Jon Wright is unusually inventive in his playful sadism, with cool spins on traditional bullying methods (a nasty towel-whipping and the grisliest wedgie ever) and one horrifyingly cringe-inducing bit involving an eyeball that needs pushing back into its socket.
Given a sadly low-key cinema release in its home country, this is a rare UK flick that succeeds in infiltrating American territory and making the material distinctively its own.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
