After a series of brutal murders, a college journalism student finds the link between the killers' game of making his victims choose their fates and her mother's suicide several years ago and tries to stop his rampage from continuing.
This here was quite the disappointment and rarely had anything really worthwhile about it. One of the main issues here with this one is the fact that so much of the film rests on the investigation angle that isn't even properly played out at all here since the actual detective work to do this is so haphazard, slowly developed and not in the slightest bit interesting. By going through the motions of her being questioned more for not partying with her friends at college rather than actively being a part of the investigation, stumbling upon the nature of the killer rather haphazardly and then not even being targeted until the very end as the actual police don't seem that invested in what's going on make this quite played out and rather bland about this supposed part of the story that's one of the biggest selling points about it. As well, there's also the fact that the actual kills here are just beyond lame that it really torpedoes the film quite readily by facilitating such an utterly lamentable feature that's not even that well developed at all. By forcing them into making choices that come off with a ridiculous air that's not in the slightest bit intimidating, when a small measure of muscle against him would've rendered a successful counterattack that stops the spree rather easily, this one doesn't really exploit this all that well by even still only featuring such a small handful of kills that it really undermines what could've been a lot of fun. These are all placed up front to start this going, but instead there's so little of interest in how this goes about the murder scenes that there's not much to really gleam from them other than the sadistic actions that take place, and that's not all that special an accomplishment here with the way this goes about deploying it's stalking scenes. These are fun only in the sense of the cruelty played out throughout the dismembering of the bodies, as the deaths are pretty bloody and gruesome here which manages to be quite a nice feat with the way this brings about these quite brutal kills, especially in the opening as the way it plays out is for once quite chilling with the family held hostage and then bringing along the second piano-player's fate even though there's no death there. That one works more for its strong stalking in the auditorium for anything else, but it's the closest the film comes to getting any kind of tension or suspense here and works nicely along with the outcome of the brutal kills here. Otherwise there isn't much else to this one.
Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
