Claustrophobia

There is no word terrible enough to describe this movie. Every single solitary aspect of it was pitiful and completely senseless. The acting was of the worst of I've ever seen, the directing was the official worst I've seen and don't even get me started on the script writers. On the cover of the DVD case I got out I read one review that said "The best straight to video movie of the year" well for the sake of movie lovers everywhere I severely, severely hope this was not the case. I mean you can't tell me NONE of these obviously middle class, decent job occupying, love to talk women have a cell phone. I honestly reckon I could sit here for around 3 hours typing up problems with this movie movie but I won't bother because it wasn't worth it. All I'll say is please, please for future movies sake DO NOT GET THIS FILM OUT!!!

I've seen some bad movies in my life time, but this movie is one of the worst. What surprises me the the most is that it got distributed outside USA. You can clearly see that this movie is made by amateurs, first of all the lighting is really bad, at one point you can't even see the person being film because the sun whites out the camera. The acting is bad, the dialogs are boring, and scenes are drawn out to make the movie longer (at least so it seems) Another thing is the sound effects. the plot in the movie spins around a serial killer going after three girls in a house. Most of the time the killer is on the roof. This results in footsteps on the roof.. But the footsteps sounds SO wrong. It actually sounds like someone walking on dry snow, only there is no snow. There are some good things about the movie though. Sheeri Rappaport who plays Gina actually plays a credible character, and at the end of the movie they manage to make it a bit scary, and for a minute your not sure how it's gonna end.

It's great that new directors get to make movies, and i understand that these guys have a limited supply of money. But distributing this around the world is ripping people off. Luckily i didn't have to pay to see it.

A crossbow killer terrifies a suburban community, and his latest targets are three co-workers house-sitting for the weekend. Lauren (Melanie Lynskey), the optimist, has invited her department from work, but only two show up: socially awkward Grace (Mary Lynn Rajskub), who's terrified of leaving her house, and outspoken Gina (Sheeri Rappaport), who expected a bigger crowd, and doesn't want to be stuck with these two all weekend. Their unease with each other soon yields to the awful possibility that they might be the serial killer's next victims, as the telltale signs of his modus operandi accumulate. This is a low-budget movie that makes good use of its "claustrophobic" production by turning a few horror conventions on its head. It substitutes bright, unfiltered daylight for night, obscuring the stalker while making his targets vulnerable; they can't escape while their every movement is visible. The women are trapped without electricity, shrouding them with natural indoor lighting and shrinking their environment even further. Ambient sound is kept to a minimum, to make room for the smallest aural clues of the killer's presence. Occasionally it's punctuated by the trampling of the stalker's feet overhead, which seems to mirror their nervous, galloping heartbeats. The three actresses play well off each other, with lots of comic interplay to relieve the tension. Grace seems thrive on nervousness, while Melanie plays the calm at the center of the storm. Sheeri's performance covers the emotional extremes. She projects her feelings of frustration, rage, and despair, and it seems as if it's on behalf of all three. She takes a confrontational approach with everyone, including the killer, and as a result, is able to discover the true face of the terror that hunts them. While "Claustrophobia" uses some of the same imagery of serial killer movies, its approach is lighter and more playful, and manages to avoid resorting to cheap exploitation, without sacrificing the sense of intimacy with the characters necessary to relate to their terrifying experience. Maybe that's because it seems its subtext is empathy: Even as their community remains ignorant of what's happening in broad daylight,the killer seems to understand their every weakness, to prey on them. Meanwhile, the "shooter" on the opposite end, the camera, seems to work against the killer's agenda, trying to avoid taking his point of view, and not allowing the three women to be reduced to mere targets. Because of this approach, we're not so much voyeurs while watching this, but participants. Sheeri Rappaport wrote of her experiences in earlier horror film, "Little Witches", of the difficulty in starring in a movie where the agenda and desires of the producer and the audience can be very different than that of the performer. `Claustrophobia' seems to offer an opportunity for all three points of view to meet on common ground. I recommend this not only as a horror film, but also as a unique take on the genre, and a good opportunity to see these actresses in a different light. Don't forget to turn the sound up!

I don't know from where to start: the film is amateurish. The acting is terrible, the plot is poor even the usage of camera is childish. A serial killer using arrows to kill his victims... The making of the film took less than two days, the script took less than three days I think. If it took more then something is wrong with the cast. No I did not like this film at all it's more bad than ''Decoys'' or ''quiet kill''. It is a surprise to me that 61 people voted for it and it has an average rating of 5. I suppose there were some friendly votes. I cannot believe that people actually paid to watch this movie or the ''actors'' got paid to participate.

Following Melanie Lynskey's impressive debut in Peter Jackson's highly acclaimed Heavenly Creatures (alongside a young Kate Winslet), I expected fame and fortune to come easily for the talented actress; A-list status, however, has eluded her thus far—not at all surprising with cheap-looking shot-on-video stuff like Serial Slayer on her CV.

Melanie plays Lauren, one of a trio of work-mates who rather stupidly decides to hold a slumber party, despite a serial killer preying on young women in the area. Before the sun has even set, the three girls are terrorised by the crossbow-wielding maniac and must use their guile to try and escape.

Director Mark Tapio Kines clearly intended this film to be a work of suspense, rather than the trashy slasher that the title suggests, and instead of going down the obvious exploitative route, he attempts to make his film a tense, character driven piece that relies more on dialogue than T&A and gore. Big mistake! With a script than consists primarily of banal conversation between the young women, the film is more likely to bore than scare. Kines does handle some of the later moments of tension well, and the ending cranks up the excitement level a notch or two, suggesting that he knows how to handle certain types of scene better than others, but the majority of this film is a snooze-fest thanks to his poorly realised lofty pretensions.

Things would have been much better if there had been more action throughout, or better yet, if Kines had just relented, got Lynskey and friends down to their undies for a pillow fight (Mel's carrying a few extra pounds here, but she's still cute), and then had them graphically gutted one-by-one by the maniac.