Review of Cornered! (2009) by Derrick F — 29 Jun 2010

The main concept of a good slasher film is to create a sense of fun, nothing is taken too seriously and we can sit back and enjoy the ride. With this in mind, you know you are watching a poor film when you're bored for the majority of the running time as well as counting down the minutes until the film is over. Cornered is very much in the bad category and ended up being a real disappointment.

The main problem with Cornered is due to the first hour of the film being utterly devoid of plot development. Almost nothing happens bar un-likeable characters talking utter nonsense around a poker table that has very little to do with the films main plot. The opening five minutes tells us all we need to know; a serial killer is on the loose and has taken a fancy to attacking people in late night shops and stealing the CCTV footage. We find this out from our rag tag group of shop employees and a delivery man (played by Steve Guttenberg of all people) who are discussing the various ways they would like to kill the killer if given the chance. Deliveryman Guttenberg disappears for the next 60 minutes as our group holds a late night poker game, one of them gets strung out and starts hallucinating about a cockroach attack, an other takes phone calls as a sex line operator and the rest talk utter rubbish. The actual killer doesn't start slicing and dicing until the last 20 minutes, and surprise surprise he starts bumping them off the way they said they would kill him. Anyone with half a brain will have figured out who the killer is after the opening 5 minutes which makes you wonder exactly why bothered to keep his identity a secret for so long.

I must admit that the last 20 minutes were quite fun, although there is very little gore to be found here making the film quite tame. The final reveal is laughable though and the previous 60 minutes are a pain to sit through. It's almost as if someone came up with an idea for a short film and then extended it by adding in a ridiculous amount of padding. I'm not sure if the director was trying to make the opening 60 minutes funny or not, if he was then he failed miserably.

In the end, Cornered would have been much better as a short film or as an hour long episode of Maters of Horror. Sadly it ends up being a rather tame slasher film with a painfully obvious killer and far too much padding. You're better off giving this a miss.