Removal - Einfach aufgewischt!

It must be a fine balance to write a screenplay that consistently wrong-foots the audience, makes them smile occasionally while delivering a fairly grim and creepy story, and ensures that it all makes sense too. Nick Simon, who directs and co-writes achieves this very nicely. There's an irresistible grim strand of humour running through this, although the main character Cole has little to be cheerful about. Mark Kelly is very good as the flawed central character, fighting several of his own personal demons, as well as the manipulations of those around him. Even Oz Perkins as the the unpleasant Henry Sharpe has a dry line in humour.

That the twists and turns pay off is a bonus - it isn't always the case, and while there's nothing wrong with open-ended stories, it's good to have things tied up here. Morte than that I won't reveal.

As a chiller about a put-upon industrial cleaner, Removal works very well indeed. My score is 9 out of 10.

REMOVAL is your standard psychological thriller set in a dark and sprawling old house. The main character is a cleaner who soon discovers his new place of work has some dark and disturbing murderous secrets to hide. While I appreciate that the filmmakers went out of their way to shoot something other than your bog standard CGI ghost film, the problem with REMOVAL is its familiarity. That, and the fact that protagonist Mark Kelly just isn't a very interesting actor.

This is a film which thinks it is far more original and cleverly-written than it really is. I could name one or two obvious inspirations on the story but I won't as these would give the game away. Let's just say that the film should have given thanks to those movies in the end credits. What we have in REMOVAL is your typical low budget filmmaking, a just-about-adequate type of movie that never really grips or blows you away as it should. It does feel very talky and bogged down in places. The cast features TWILIGHT's Billy Burke, a cameoing Elliott Gould playing a psychiatrist, and a big role for Oz Perkins (son of Anthony). Kelly Brook is here too, and the quality of her acting doesn't seem to have improved with the passage of time.

The soundtrack is just noise in the background that doesn't fit with the movie! This isn't a movie with Billy Burke. He's only in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Oz Perkins is a really bad, over-the-top actor. I'm sorry I paid to see this movie. What a disappointment!

Oz Perkins is best known as the writer/director of great recent films The Monkey and Longlegs, as well as the criminally overlooked The Blackcoat's Daughter. He is also a solid actor, and gives his best performance in 2010's Removal. Playing a rich, entitled monster can go wrong in many ways in the wrong actor's hands but Perkins absolutely knocks this out of the park. He also cowrote the screenplay, which is strong. Billy Burke gets top billing, but is very much in a supporting role. Perkins steals the show with a performance that deserves so much more attention than it will ever get. Highly recommended.

Removal (2010) is a horror crime thriller movie written by Osgood Perkins and the movie was plain awful.

Positives for Removal (2010): The movie has some recognizable people like Billy Burke, Mark Kelly, Emma Caulifield, Kelly Brook and Osgood Perkins himself. That's all I've got to say for the positives.

Negatives for Removal (2010): The movie is horribly paced with its 90 runtime. None of the characters mattered and they are just floating pieces of paper. The acting is really bad which it feels like in they're in the a school play. And finally, the movie is just really boring.

Overall, Removal (2010) wasn't the best day in office for Osgood Perkins, but thankfully everything was all up hill for Osgood Perkins as a filmmaker.