Chain Letter

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 movie was not at all what I had expected it to be. Was it better? No, quite the opposite actually. This movie was really boring and was suffering from a rather silly storyline.

The concept of this movie was about some chain letter that was sent out to a group of people, and those who deleted the message ended up dead in gruesome ways.

Nothing much interesting happened throughout the movie, aside from the odd brutal killing here and there. But the characters in the movie were fairly one-dimensional and you never really cared for any of them or formed any kind of bond with them, so you ended up just shrugging most of the time and looking forward to the way that the next in line was killed.

If you enjoy brutal horror movies with inventive killings, then you might find some enjoyment in "Chain Letter", but if you enjoy horror movies that are driven by a deep, captivating and interesting story, then this movie is a poor choice to put your money on.

Personally, I was drifting off a couple of times throughout the movie, and my focus started to shift elsewhere. This movie didn't make any lasting impression, and it will never make it to a second time around in the DVD player. It simply just wasn't worth it.

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.

The movie starts out very well and the whole movie has the golden rules for horror, which most of us have gotten tired of since it makes movies too predictable, and this movie is no exception.

The movie builds up very well and with good pacing. You get the chance to get to know a few of the characters on a deeper level, but nothing to stand up for. The gore is very well made and not over done, that's actually the best about this movie, the killings. The ending was very weak, very predictable and didn't leave you in awe as Secret Window or Identity did.

Chain Letters, we have all received them and we all hate them, and most of us delete them before finishing reading them without thinking about it. That's what makes this movie quite alright on the plot part, it's a nice fresh idea to what Wes Craven started back in '96 with "Scream" (the teenage horror flicks) or perhaps he started it with "A Nightmare on Elm Street" back in '84, depends on how you look at it.

I kind of liked the movie, but it's a one time watch. You should watch this when you're in the mood for a simple flick with minimum amount of brain activity usage, because this is not one to watch when you're actually in the mood for a movie evening with your partner or friends.

I rate this ******

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.