Review of Kill Theory (2009) by Jackalqueen ~ — 29 Jul 2009

Would you kill your friends to save yourself? That's the question the psychopath in this film wants to find out. He has just been released from an asylum where he had been sent after being out climbing with friends. An accident happened and he had to choose to cut his friends loose so they would fall to their deaths or fall with them. He was obviously released a bit too early...

A group of friends, celebrating graduation, go off to a secluded holiday home and things are going fine until one of them ends up stabbed to death and thrown though a window as a literal wake-up call to the others. He has left them video footage showing how he gave the girl the option of staying alive, if she would shoot her sleeping boyfriend. He tells them that they have three hours. If only one of them is left alive, they will be allowed to leave. If more than one is alive, they will all be killed.

This is a horror film, of course, so instead of all sticking together and trying to outwit or overpower the killer when he comes to check in three hours, they all start turning on each other. Pretty soon, they are finding any excuse to kill or abandon one another to their fate.

I would say this is a slasher film, although not a typical one because the 'killer' is not the person doing the killing (apart from the first victim). Unlike many recent films, this isn't PG-13, it's R rated and it has a fair amount of gore, a little bit of nudity and a lot of swearing. It also stars Agnes Bruckner (Vacancy 2, Blood & Chocolate, The Woods etc) so I spent most of the film thinking 'Doesn't she look a lot like Melissa George there?'.

This will not be winning any awards, it isn't stunningly original (it feels like they 'borrowed' the 'What would you be prepared to do?' idea from the Saw franchise) and it gets a bit silly at times but I would still recommend it. There are better films out there but If you take all those things into consideration, you won't be too disappointed and you won't feel like you have just wasted 90 minutes of your life.