100 Feet

I thought this was a decent movie. The story line particularly made this title more appeasing to me. A lady kills her husband in self defense after being beaten for years? I like this only because this a real scenario that happens all to often, and the women in punished for it. Even though eventually the husband would probably kill her anyways. I like the fact that she is on house arrest which gives the story a certain twist. The scenes are suspenseful and make you clench your teeth and jump at certain times. The characters are done well and the story moves at a decent pace. There was some really good gore and some particularly scary parts which were also done well. As for the end, what can I say, after all the horror movies that have been made endings are harder and harder to do. This movie was great up until the end, and even the end was not that horrible, it was still kind of bad enough to make me reduce my rating on this movie. All in all, worth the watch, but probably wont be a favorite.

Saw this at a film fest in Germany and its really not a bad horror drama. Marnie Watson (Famke Janssen) is released from prison but has to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest. This is the same house in which she killed, in self defense, her Police Officer husband Mike Watson (Michael Paré).

Plot wise this movie falls a little bit flat. There is no explanation to all the events that occur in this film. Shanks seems to take a very strange interest in Marnie. Even to the point of parking outside her house and watching her day and night. But there is no real reason for this, he has a hunch that perhaps Marnie didn't kill Mike. The acting overall was fine, I quite like Janssen and she played this part well. Although I thought she was very calm considering the circumstances.

Directed by Eric Red, who I knew little about. When I checked it appears he has done other films, things like Cohen and Tate, and has quite a few writing credits. There are some nice well done scenes in this film, a few jump type moments but nothing really scary. There is one quite horrific scene in the bedroom when the ghost of Mike takes a dislike to Marnie's new beau. The effects were done well, though a little bit over dramatic at the end.

This is a Horror/Thriller but I would say leans more to the Horror genre than Thriller. It could have gone more down the Thriller route, and there were enough plot lines running through to create a decent Thriller.

All in all it was an enjoyable film that held my interest, but left me asking more questions than it answered.

The story starts with an interesting premise but soon goes overboard in depicting some gory scenes of a ghost's vengeance during which time much blood is shed for the sake of horror fans who like this sort of thing. It's well acted and tense with some quietly underplayed opening scenes, but once the ghost starts wreaking the place all hell breaks loose and the story loses a great deal of credibility.

The acting is fine, with Famke Janssen giving a strong performance as a woman forced to wear an ankle bracelet and kept under close watch by a suspicious policeman who was her husband's partner. But the tension doesn't become tight until the last third of the story and then it goes way over the top in depicting violence.

Scary enough but midway through, the story loses a lot of credibility despite the high quality of the performances.

Sadly, 100 Feet, the title of screenwriter Eric Red's 2008 horror starring Famke Janssen, does not refer to the many legs of a giant flesh-eating centipede—a shame, 'cos I reckon that would have made for a far more original and believable movie than this well-acted, but ultimately very silly ghost story.

Janssen stars as Marnie Watson, who has returned home after 752 days in prison for killing her abusive husband; it is there that she is to serve the remainder of her sentence under house arrest, fitted with an electronic tag to restrict her movement to a radius of—you guessed it!—100 feet. As Marnie slowly begins to put her life back in order (painting over blood stains on the wall, scaring homeless guys, screwing the delivery boy etc.) she finds her progress hampered by the very angry ghost of her dead husband, who hasn't quite finished with using his wife as a punch bag.

Red, whose earlier writing credits include the excellent thriller The Hitcher and cult vampire hit Near Dark, clearly possesses some skill behind the camera managing a creepy atmosphere, confidently tackling some complex effects and pulling off a few effective scares, but it seems as though, in changing roles, he's forgotten the importance of a really tight script; glaring plot-holes and lapses in logic blight this film from start to finish! (I'm not going to waste time going into details, but if you're interested, check out the film's message board on IMDb—plenty of other people have listed them for me).

It is thanks to Janssen's presence (she's still a major hottie and acquits herself admirably in her role), and one particularly grisly death scene that had me double checking the DVD's rating (yes, it really is only a 15 certificate), that I'm willing to overlook some of the film's minor problems, but a talented, easy-on-the-eye lead and some nasty gore only excuses so much.

Next time Eric, iron out the uglier creases before going into production and you might have another hit on your hands (oh, and feel free to take the killer centipede idea and run with it—seriously, that would make one hell of a film!).

100 feet is an openly aggressive film that does well to keep your pulse pounding all the way up to the flat line ending. I enjoyed the idea behind the story and for the most part felt as though it was well portrayed. Several times you find yourself having to stretch your imagination in order to play along but nothing I would consider a deal breaker. I highly appreciated the amount of time and attention spent on the gore effects. On the other side of that coin a little more time and effort put into actually frightening the viewer would have been well received. Sadly this is a film that would have ranked much higher had the ending not brought the momentum to a stand-still. As is, still a decent flick.