The Innocent

Actor Stuart Brennan takes the directorial chair for the second time in this dark horror film. Shot in Devon the film does what so many micro budget independent films fail to do and thats portray the characters as believable people avoiding the cheesy lines associated with many inde horror films. Slow paced yet never boring, always on edge with the tense atmosphere, not gory yet still very scary. Fantastic score from Alan Deacon, and superb animated credits, good performances all round and a cool cameo from Brennan himself. Burn Hand Film Productions again show that massive budgets are not needed for good strong entertainment. Well worth a watch.

I watched this on a DVD box set I picked up at Best Buy, and can't stop thinking about it so am gonna post my thoughts on here. Firstly, it's not the next silence of the lambs, but... it's cool. It's your usual teenagers on spring break stuff, but the setting is unusual (a weird sculpture place and hotel) and the acting is not half bad either. The direction is what makes it stand out. You feel like you're there with these kids. Seems obvious, a bit of shaky camera work, etc, but it transcends that, it's well cut, the footage a bit dodgy, but the angles, choice of framing, etc is really first class. I'm not sure about the ending, but it was better than a cop out gore fest you usually get. The scenes in sepia were the best moments for me, they looked great and had some really excellent suspense building surprises. Overall it's a film that shows it's budget technically, but shows premise and potential from the director and his cast and crew. Not surprising to see them all moving on to bigger things now! I want to see another film directed by this guy, ideally on a bigger budget, maybe with a face or two in it. Even if you don't enjoy the film, you gotta give it credit, it's more watchable (despite the technical issues) than that stupid 'captivity' that's just come out! Someone give that budget to this fella!