100 Feet

This is a great thriller from Eric Red, the writer of Hitcher and many more. On the outside it's a budget haunted house horror flick, the kind that everybody used to make a couple of years ago, before the slashers came back. But this one stands out with its solid writing and impressive no nonsense execution. Eric Red took what was fashionable and made the most of it. He has quite a reputation with numerous classic genre films throughout the 80s and 90s that he has to live up to. And live up to it this movie does. Famke Janssen carries the film with ease. It doesn't take much time till you root for her because the character is as real a person as it gets in these movies. The supporting cast are all great too. Bobby Cannavale who plays the cop on a stakeout outside her house does a "young Chazz Palminteri", just what the role asks for. And Michael Pare who plays the ghost actually acts and acts well under the coat of blurry special effects and not a word of dialog save for a couple of grunts, not to mention he *is* scary. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I hope Eric Red continues to make movies this good.

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!).

Yes - the production company of The Asylum puts out plenty of movies. Most are not worth the price of a cup of coffee or a bag of chips.

They are just plain outright bad in so many forms that to sit through one is very hard.

This story on the other hand is an exception to the rule.

Not a fantastic piece, but still good.

With a bigger budget, a tighter script and a little more effort and thought, this could have been and should have been a movie that made bigger reviews, bigger profits and a bigger name in all.

It has potential, but somehow doesn't quite hit the mark of a great movie - because of minor details.

The cast is good, the camera work is good and so much else is good, but it's sort on something that I just can't put my finger on that would make this really good.

Overall, it's a movie that can entertain and far better than many others that are produced by Hollywood.

This is by a small company that works for the most part out of Bulgaria or eastern European countries and usually budgets less than 5 million.

So given all, it's not bad - a little stupid in some places - but worth a watch.

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.