Starring: Billie Piper, Luke Mably, Sam Troughton

Written by: Phil O’Shea

Directed by: David Smith

Released: August 12, 2005

Rating: 3/10

The setting takes place in London where 4 students are contacted by an accommodations office of the local University, offering lodging in an old mansion. As soon as the students arrive they quickly settle in, and upon getting to know one another find out that each one of them has killed someone in their past. Jenny, the “psychic” student, begins seeing visions of death and mayhem that previously took place in the very mansion they are living in; after which chaos ensues.

Alright lads and lasses, I’m just going to jump right in and say wow….this movie really blows. The openings credits permeate our eyes with flashes of torture, mystery, and blood that…really appeared to be random and nonsensical with the way the images were executed. I suppose that’s what the filmmaker was going for, a sort of madcap of random images to confuse the viewer, but would make sense later on in the film. Well, all it did was just annoy me and make me wonder what the hell I got myself into.

As for our leading characters, we have Jenny, the psychic, Nick, a graphic design student, and Tom and Adele, our two violence driven, drug addicted lovers that enjoy play choking each other as they fuck. I should also mention Tina, the weird girl that greets the students whence they arrived at the house. All of these characters, as cliché as they may be, were brought to this house for one specific reason; a killer for a killer.

You see, many moons ago two lovers (Tina and Edmund….yes that’s right, Tina the weird girl) were being persecuted for their very love (a rich girl falling in love with a black servant? Oh my!), so they decided to die for each other b/c afterall, nothing can stop true love…not  even death *grimaces*. Without giving anything away (because I know anyone actually reading this is going to run out quickly to buy the film) Edmund shoots Tina and was about to shoot himself when, oh no! The bullet jammed! So he ends up being tortured in the attic by the outraged townsfolk. Therefore, the killer for a killer means one of the students now living in that house has to die in order to free the spirit of Edmund. Kinda reminds me of The Skeleton Key…

*sigh*

During the time the students are there (a solid 2 days…), the 100 yr anniversary of Edmunds death is being counted down by a spirit clock in the main hall. This is actually what traps the kids in the house and forces them to stay there until one of them dies; and by one of them I mean one of the men, because even though Tom ends up killing Adele by way of strangling her to death, they are all still trapped in the house…*stares blankly at the screen*…Jenny and Nick fall in love with each other…about 2 hours after they meet, Tina (the weird girl that’s actually a ghost, but isn’t because you can touch her and all the other students, not just Jenny, can see her) walks around being weird the whole entire time and does absolutely nothing useful until pretty much the very end. Honestly, I just don’t get what Edmund sees in her.

Really, what follows is just a hodgepodge of poor scriptwriting, fucking awful camera work, and bad bad acting. I mean…..really…..fucking…..bad. I laughed my ass off twice: Once when Tom punched Adele in the face after she started whining at him (note: I don’t condone the hitting of women, but this was really fuckin hilarious) and the second time when the end credits began rolling and my ears were met with the wonderful and melodic sounds of….. Teardrops by Alsou (the same girl that plays Tina), a romantic and gushy love song that better belongs on the soundtrack of something like The Notebook or A Walk to Remember, not as the end credits song for a movie that is apparently HORROR. Did I mention this is a horror film? Well it’s supposed to be…but somewhere near the end it ended up turning into a forbidden love story *groans*.

It’s fucking insulting and completely diminishes any credibility this movie might’ve had going for itself, if the movie itself wasn’t so gosh dern awful!

 Anyways, to keep this review from getting any longer, my advice is to just stay away, stay far away…unless you happen to be a masochist that enjoys torturing yourself by way of “so-bad-it’s-really-that-fucking-bad” movies.