Chain Letter

A chain letter is forwarded to a one kid online, he decides to forward it to some of his friends. Those who forward the chain letter live, those who don't die.

The film Chain Letter went wrong in many places, so many that it pains me to write this review because that would mean I have to remember parts of the movie. Here is a film so boring, unimaginative and down right stupid that it almost doesn't qualify as a horror film. The one and only thing the film has going for it are some gruesome death scenes, yet even those aren't that great. So now that I have that one and only positive out in the open, let me address the numerous issues this film has.

For starters, the script. You should always start with the script, or in this case, lack there of. Chain Letter has a simple premise. People are dying because they don't forward a chain letter. Now, the direction the film could have taken and if they did, would have made it a hundred times more interesting, is a supernatural route. Instead, they went with some cult route that has a killer, deemed The Chain Man, tracking these kids down through technology and killing them with his chains. I had a good laugh seeing this monster type on a laptop.

The story had some interesting bits to it that are only mentioned and never explored. The cult of people who hate technology, is shown to us at the last minute and we never get the chance to go deeper than that. This part could have helped the film if they would actually pursue it, but they thought it would be more interesting to bore the audience to death. Both Keith David and Brad Dourif seem to be trying in their poorly written and underused roles, but even they seem to know they are in a stinker of a movie.

We never got the opportunity to like, or even hate the characters. I would hope that the film would at least make some characters clichéd enough to hate, but not here. These characters were so one dimensional I was surprised they got actors at all. I don't remember a single character from this movie, other than the detective and the teacher (David and Dourif). Sadly the film is too boring to even remember characters enough to hate.

There is no climax. The film has no rising action, it goes from one kill to the next. There isn't even a main character. Once you think it's the female, but then we end up spending more time with the detective. The movie doesn't know who's who or where it wants to go. It's a confusing mess, so much that we get to see the title sequence TWICE. We literally get to see the title of the movie pop up in the exact same manner twice. For what purpose? You either start with the title, or end with the title and go to black. Don't do both, then have a few minutes of random images afterwards. It makes no sense.

The writers, directors and producers have no idea what they were doing. The movie is competently done, but what good is that? The only people who seemed to know what they were doing were the special effects guys, dishing out the blood. The Chain Man is forgettable, this movie is a complete mess and I wouldn't even consider calling it a horror film. Delete this Chain Letter and move on with your life.

Chain Letter is not very good. I can relax my standards for horror movies typically if it has some redeeming qualities. An interesting character or a cool villain or unique plot are all components that can get me through. This movie lacked all of these and really lacked any hope of being a decent movie.

The movie seems so similar to any horror movie that it's hard to find anything it does well. If you like gruesome deaths, than it has a couple unique "chain related" moments. Other than that, the movie is shallow story wise, has flat characters provides very little pay off. There isn't much suspense built up either, but certain scenes showed some promise.

I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone unless they absolutely love chains.

This is completely pointless movie, one of those where you watch it to see what happens and then it just ends suddenly and you think WTF? Normally in slasher movies like this you'd think the weakest points are the plot and the acting. Surprisingly, there was nothing wrong with the acting. The main cast did what they were meant to but the ultra poor script didn't have any proper development for each character so there was nothing much to feel for any of them. Even the premise of the story didn't make sense. A huge guy with a bandaged face sends out chain letter e-mails to people with the threat of death of they don't play the game. What the game is...no one knows because all the letter says is that if you don't play you die. There's no mention if you delete the e-mail you die or if you don't forward the message you die. This movie is that lame that a few simple rules aren't even scripted in.

Some of the deaths are truly gory, even by Saw standards. But in the grand scheme of things they are entirely pointless. Even the Saw scenes had some intelligence to the deaths- you're a bad person but you get a chance at redemption but not until you go through a trial by fire and lots of pain. The deaths in Chain Letter are just gore and pain. This makes watching any Paris Hilton movie fun and educational.

Deon Taylor should be made to undergo one of the death scenes in his movie- either that or threaten him with a scene if he doesn't stop writing and directing such rubbish.

Recommendation: only if you like to pull out your fingernails with a tweezer dipped in acid.

CHAIN LETTER is yet another SAW derivative, this time made with a plot that copies that of THE RING. It involves a viral chain letter that's being spread by the Internet and mobile phones; little do those who receive the letter realise that it's been sent by a masked killer who's ready to bump off those who refuse to forward it on.

Yeah, the plot makes little sense when you look at it like that, so what we're left with here is a series of gory set-pieces combined with a police investigation into the murders. In reality CHAIN LETTER is an excuse for some very gory murder scenes inevitably involving chains, although they're handled quite cheesily and are never disturbing.

That's pretty much all the film has going for it, because the characters are extraordinarily dull and the it also manages to waste the talents of not one but two cult actors: Keith David (THE THING) plays a detective, and Brad Dourif (CHILD'S PLAY) is a teacher. Elsewhere we get Betsy Russell to hammer home the SAW connection while Michael Bailey Smith (THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake) is the hulking but brain-dead bad guy. Other than the fun gore there's nothing going for this one whatsoever.

Chain Letter (2010)

** (out of 4)

Rather routine slasher has a group of friends getting a chain letter e-mail saying that if they don't pass it along they'll die. The group all delete it and soon enough they start getting killed. If you've ever seen a slasher movie in your life then this here really isn't going to offer anything you haven't already seen. The one gimmick is that the killer is stalking the people through their phones and other online devices but this really doesn't add up to much nor does the mystery of who the killer really is. While watching CHAIN LETTER I couldn't help but feel like I was watching a film where the writer and director didn't know too much about the genre and before making the film they watched several recent horror movies and tried to copy them. It's obvious from the violence and gore level that someone had watched the SAW films as several of the deaths are quite lavished and built up to something a normal person couldn't do. The death scenes are at least done in good fashion as they are quite graphic at times and the make-up department doesn't play shy with the red stuff. Those wanting gore are going to get quite a bit of it here but sadly these scenes are spread out through the running time so there are a lot of dry moments with nothing much happening. The mystery of who the killer is really never grabs the viewer so trying to unveil that is never as much fun as it should have been. The performances are actually better than average and we get small roles from Keith David and Brad Dourif and it's always nice to see them. CHAIN LETTER also goes for some "flashy" style that just never works. In the end, there are certainly much better films out there but this one here needed a touch of life and energy to make it more memorable than it actually is.