DVD: NEEDLE (2010) -7 DAYS OF HORROR, DAY 5

 

I bought this on the basis of a new good reviews on Amazon. They were wrong.

The supernatural premise is basically a macguffin. There's this magic box, see, and you have to insert a photo of your victim, add some drops of your blood and a somewhat larger quantity of molten wax, turn a key to start it, wait for it to whir for a few moments and then out pops a wax voodoo doll for you stab, maim, or mutilate according to taste. Congratulations! You now have the means to commit a perfect untraceable stabbing/maiming/mutilating/ murder.

So basically this is another teen slasher and thee is plenty of teen slashing. For example-

Yes, there is plenty of gore as our unseen slasher has lots of fun usually intercut with shots of the victim and shots of what's being done with the voodoo doll. However, as the killer is not in the same place as the victim there's little sense of menace and none of the one on one brutality normally associated with a slasher. 

Ah yes, the story, what little there is of it. It's set on an Australian university campus and revolves around a group of twenty year olds, one of whom receives the magic box from his dead father's estate and it get stolen almost immediately. Here they are. Can you spot the killer?

I was pretty sure I knew who did it before the killings even started. Slasher rule 1: if it's one of a group it's always the one who seems the least likely. So I sat through this not very impressive movie waiting for confirmation. Except I forgot Alternative Slasher Rule 1: if it's not the one who seems the most likely, then it's the one you never even considered because there was completely no point. Okay, okay, I got it wrong.

Not for the first time recently, I thought the 18 certificate was rather harsh. While gory, it's not brutal. The language is standard for a teen slasher. There is no titillating sex or nudity, only some brief affectionate lesbian lip-locking. 

The police and our heroes and all particularly stupid as the former never interview the latter and a little more perceptive research by the latter who have revealed the killer much sooner. But then we wouldn't have a movie. Basically it's all fairly flimsy and doesn't really have anything going for it apart from the gore.