Faces do Medo: Bem Vindo a Família

Torment is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the dullest films I have ever seen, and I have seen some rubbish in my time.

The plot follows a young family as they go on holiday to their house in the middle of the woods and then get tormented by some creepy rednecks. Not the most original plot ever devised, but that is the least of this film's problems.

The most egregious problem is that, for a horror film, it completely fails to be scary in any shape or form (which is kind of missing the point somewhat). But there is more, aside from the usual obvious flaws in logic that befalls poorly made horror films. It is a Herculean task to find anything likable in most of the main characters; the person playing Cory has little to no charisma, and the child is some spoilt a*****e. There is no rhyme or reason for the creepy rednecks torturing the yuppie heroes, apart from just being mentally ill, and any attempt to give them some kind of motive makes no sense. The ending is rather stupid, and one can easily see it coming. I could write a better plot than the people who wrote this abomination.

There is one reason why I am giving this film 2 stars rather than a rock bottom 1 star, and that is Katharine Isabelle. She is the only decent actor in this mess, but even so, she is still nothing spectacular (to be fair though, it would be impossible for Marlon Brando, Peter O'Toole or Laurence Olivier to look good in Torment). There was another thing I found rather worrying about Isabelle's performance. I do think that she is talented; films like Ginger Snaps and American Mary clearly show this. However, she does seem to be wasting her time and efforts starring in rubbish like this. Katharine Isabelle is in serious danger of having a career similar to Nicolas Cage, in that for every one great film you have about 5 or 6 god- awful ones.

All in all, Torment is a terrible horror film that is conspicuously lacking in horror, and I suggest that you stay away from this like the plague.

It seems like horror movies these days fall into 3 categories: good or excellent (less than 5% of all horror movies per year); "I've seen worse" (30% of all horror movies per year); and utter garbage (the remaining 60-plus% per year). This is one of those "I've seen worse".

The entire movie is a mishmash of different horror movie elements you've seen in plenty of horror movies before:

1. deranged redneck family. 2. unsuspecting yuppies are stuck in a rural area with no cell phone reception. 3. decent actors wasted on a terrible script and poorly developed characters (although the kid was annoying). 4. long torture scenes where the victims are bound and gagged. 5. "BOOM!" jump scares whenever we see a shadow. 6. the heroine is pinned down by the villain but then finds a conveniently placed weapon nearby to defend herself with. 7. despite the fact that she's been through a physically trying ordeal through mud, blood, and grime, the heroine's hair, makeup, and nails are great. 8. the victims will knock the killer out but never make sure the killer is dead.

I was just shaking my head throughout the entire movie, constantly saying, "Wow...this is reeeeaaally generic...at best...". It's never a good sign when I start fiddling with my phone out of boredom. But I was doing that throughout the movie. Before I knew it, the movie was virtually over and everything seemed to be okay. Then the lame twist ending came around and I thought, "Well, unnecessary and mediocre twist endings are the norm these days. So why am I not shocked by this." I think the only interesting thing were the villains' masks. Why were they wearing them? I understand they wanted to keep their I.D.s a secret, but they could have chosen better masks. The masks are stuffy and hard to see through. In real life, any killer wearing those masks would have ripped them off in frustration.

All in all, this is a forgettable movie for someone looking to kill time. After watching it you'll think, "Well, I didn't hate the movie. But I have no desire whatsoever to watch it again."

One of my favourite horror icons and scream queens Katherine Isabelle plays Sarah Morgan. The new partner or wife to Corey and unlikable mum to Liam. I will say she's pretty good here and has more fighting power than other roles. The Morgan family move out to what seems like the middle of no where and it's not yet apparent anything is wrong. I won't go to much into the events of what happened but the family find themselves stalked by some strangers that wear the dismembered heads of Liam's stuffed toys somehow. And it's really quite scary. This film was made really well and built up tention well. Overall this was a pretty good horror with a pretty great cast.

This movie is definitely not terrible. It's not as classy as The Strangers or as fun as some other recent home invasion flix but, I honestly thought it was good enough to watch twice. Katharine Isabelle always demands my attention and this time I think the film worked for her. At the very least the film adds positively to her standing as one of our favorite new age scream queens.. The film is shot well, the acting's not terrible, there's some genuine suspense here and a fairly scary bad guy with a little twist or two along the way. As an avid horror fan who wades through piles of crappy movie weekly looking for the hidden gems, I'd say this film will please most genre fans. I don't know just good a sequel would be though. Might have to steer clear of that one...lol.

The best thing about this film is that it has good, creepy costumes, but other than that there really is nothing very good about it. The operative word is cliché, it pushes no boundaries and creates nothing new. The twist at the end caused me to say, "oh, that's mildly interesting", but it really had no capacity to really surprise or even any relevance. The adult leads play their parts well enough, and the motivation for the assault is plausible enough although not very likely. The leads are not as incompetent as in many such movies, but nor are they particularly compelling or innovative.

Watch it if you have nothing better to do but don't make an event out of it by inviting over a bunch of friends and expecting a scare fest, because it does not deliver much on any front.