Review of Kill Theory (2009) by Bryan G — 05 May 2010

The tag-line to director Chris Moore's Kill Theory is "deep down... we're all killers." Sounds a bit harsh, but it is a statement that I do believe in. I think that given the situation and certain circumstances everyone is capable of committing murder; some purely for evil purposes and others in a more "kill or be killed" situation. That is something that horror films have dealt with for some time, putting regular people in a situation where they have to go against their beliefs and kill in order to survive. There were a lot of interesting ideas with Kill Theory, but screenwriter Kelly C. Palmer failed to make a believable story to go along with all of the film's great ideas.

Kill Theory is another film in this year's collection of the 8 Films to Die For. And like many of the other films in this series, both past and present collections, this one's synopsis read rather well. And like so many other films in these collections, Kill Theory falls apart because of its weak developments and vast amounts of stupidity. To start things off, the movie has a rather annoying collection of characters, or meatbags, that are the film's central focus. It's always difficult to connect with a film when its characters give you very little to work with or to care about.

The movie sort of resembles Saw with its plot. This group of friends become the target of a maniac, who forces them into a game of survival. His plan is to have them kill one another, in grisly traps and scenarios that he has set up until only one person remains (kind of like Battle Royale, just not as fun or entertaining). Now this situation could have been darkly comedic, or it could have just been upsetting and horrifying. But somehow Kill Theory is neither of these, because this situation is impossible to believe. I'm not saying that there could never be someone capable of doing this to people, nor am I saying that it is impossible to think that people caught in a situation like this would actually kill one another.

The problem is the situation never felt believable because the set ups and executions of each trap or murder weren't realistic, nor were the people involved in them very convincing. Most of these scenes have that "are they even trying" vibe to them, which I hate in horror films. You know the scenes, where someone is about to be killed and they have a huge window of opportunity to fight back but don't? Well, there are a lot of those moments in Kill Theory.

Kill Theory seemed to want to quickly jump into its violent mayhem instead of building up its characters into people that we could be concerned about. And the film seemed so impatient to get to the violence it spent too little time on actually developing memorable murders. The great idea was there, but Kill Theory is a far too rushed feeling experience. I know that gory movies are the thing for horror films these days, but these filmmakers have to understand that sometimes story is just as important.