Chain Letter

I was looking through Red Box the other night when I rented this load of crap. I saw Brad Dourif and Keith David in the credits so I figured it had some merit, wrong. Hey these days torture porn and teen slasher movies are almost passé. Serial killer movies have grown from genre to category next to Drama or Comedy. No one expects too much from any of these genres but this movie manages to out stupid the worst in each of the above genres.

OK, teens get weird chain email threatening death if they don't spam 5 friends with a forward of the email. So real steel chains are literally used to dismember these teenagers if they delete CHAIN letter, get it? It was reminiscent of Hellraiser with all those chains and hooks tearing into bodies but minus the supernatural voodoo that made that movie bearable. First off, there is supposed to be some sort of conspiracy, some Luddite anti technology group that is protesting our loss of privacy via cell phone and internet technology. So why pick 5 random teen agers to kill in a gruesome fashion but with no terrorist demands or media frenzy to promote the cause? In all those teen slasher movies the teens did something or went somewhere they weren't supposed to and the monster had some good reason to kill them, like they just had sex or something. But no real motives here, from a cell of supposed warped Unibomber type geniuses who want to send out a message. Then the conspiracy finds some Leather Face Texas Chainsaw guy to do the actual murders, which makes so much sense. Then, for all the yapping about decreased privacy due to things like cell phone tracking, all the teens were killed right at their homes or in their favorite haunts, that took no technical wizardry past a phone book to track them. Then we have a veteran cop who is supposed to be tracking all this but never once does he call in for any sort of backup as he goes rummaging around empty plant buildings by his lonesome in his town's biggest crime wave investigation.

Finally there is this utterly stupid and gory dismemberment scene that opened and closed the film, literally a repeat. There was no coherent plot and a cheap theme that doesn't even tie the movie together. There was one teen who even forwarded the messages but got wasted anyways as soon as he deleted his copy. It made no sense on so many levels and was simply a cheapest sort of exploitation of an exploitation movie. I also rented & watched "I am No. 4" from Redbox last weekend and that was a turkey too. But at least that one had a coherent if silly and derivative plot.

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.

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.

A well intentioned movie. One that never really feels like it starts until your at the end. Or should I say, "the end?". I feel like this is a director to look out for. The deaths were great and the overall look and feel was really good and fresh. Dialogue and acting could really could have used more help in general. I would say that i would recommend it, but only for the deaths. In all it would have been a great movie had there been a completely different editor and a more cognitive storyline. A lot of buzz words and frantic talking do not a plot make. Oh well. Do yourself a favor and go check out the remake of "I Spit On Your Grave"

CHAIN LETTER is yet another SAW derivative, this time made with a plot that copies that of THE RING. It involves a viral chain letter that's being spread by the Internet and mobile phones; little do those who receive the letter realise that it's been sent by a masked killer who's ready to bump off those who refuse to forward it on.

Yeah, the plot makes little sense when you look at it like that, so what we're left with here is a series of gory set-pieces combined with a police investigation into the murders. In reality CHAIN LETTER is an excuse for some very gory murder scenes inevitably involving chains, although they're handled quite cheesily and are never disturbing.

That's pretty much all the film has going for it, because the characters are extraordinarily dull and the it also manages to waste the talents of not one but two cult actors: Keith David (THE THING) plays a detective, and Brad Dourif (CHILD'S PLAY) is a teacher. Elsewhere we get Betsy Russell to hammer home the SAW connection while Michael Bailey Smith (THE HILLS HAVE EYES remake) is the hulking but brain-dead bad guy. Other than the fun gore there's nothing going for this one whatsoever.