Tormented (DVD)

Head girl Justine has won a place at Oxford University and one of the most popular boys in school, Alexis, has asked her out. But his group of friends aren’t quite as cool as they appear. In fact they are a gang of merciless bullies who pick on anyone that doesn’t match up to their exacting standards. King of the in-crowd is vicious rich boy Bradley. And he and his ‘friends’ were responsible for bullying overweight asthmatic Darren Mullet to such ...
...to stop him from getting his own back. He sets about picking off the bullies one by one in a series of gruesome ways and Bradley and his friends discover there’s no reasoning with a dead geek.

Horror comedy is a very difficult sub-genre to get right, but that hasn’t stopped debut feature director Jon Wright from having a go. It’s one of those low budget jobs whose monetary constraints are clear. Hence the cast of vaguely familiar faces ... more

Head girl Justine has won a place at Oxford University and one of the most popular boys in school, Alexis, has asked her out. But his group of friends aren’t quite as cool as they appear. In fact they are a gang of merciless bullies who pick on anyone that doesn’t match up to their exacting standards. King of the in-crowd is vicious rich boy Bradley. And he and his ‘friends’ were responsible for bullying overweight asthmatic Darren Mullet to such an extent that he committed suicide. But death isn’t going to stop him from getting his own back. He sets about picking off the bullies one by one in a series of gruesome ways and Bradley and his friends discover there’s no reasoning with a dead geek.

Horror comedy is a very difficult sub-genre to get right, but that hasn’t stopped debut feature director Jon Wright from having a go. It’s one of those low budget jobs whose monetary constraints are clear. Hence the cast of vaguely familiar faces cherry-picked from television (with former cast members of everything from “Skins” to “Emmerdale”), the anonymous locations, naturalistic lighting and the feeling that everything has been shot on a single camera with a maximum of two takes. The director tries to present all the characters as sexy young things we’d all aspire to be like – so they’re constantly swearing, smoking and having sex, when they aren’t sulking in a way that is meant to be sultry but really makes them appear petulant. Not to mention the fact that many of the social groups such as the emos and teachers are played as caricatures. The result being that there are absolutely no sympathetic players. So you’ll be willing them to die as the film goes on. Yet the director makes too much of the sex and popularity contest , so it feels as if it’s there for shock value rather than as an integral part of the story. And although I commend him for showing young people using condoms, the way he lingers on them makes it look like a cheesy advert for safe sex. The whole shebang comes across as “Grange Hill” with more happy slapping.

Wright tries to make a virtue of his low budget when it comes to effects, ladling on the gore, so there are rivers of claret flowing across the screen. However, this damages the horror aspect of the film, making the deaths feel ludicrous instead of shocking. That being said, there is a decent scene with an eyeball, but I’m sure you’ll be able to see that on its own on YouTube soon enough. You can tell it is desperate to be the “Evil Dead” for the “Skins” generation, but fails because it can’t get the tone right. But what really undermines the film is the director’s lack of timing. He hits the gags too hard so it feels like he and his cast are begging the audience for laughs (it doesn’t help that many jokes are unoriginal). Meanwhile he makes a mess of the horror by pre-empting the supposedly scary moments, so you don’t jump when you should. There’s no tension, so the killings feel predictable and even the supernatural twist is handled with such a lack of surprise that it feels mundane, not to mention the fact that the killer is a kid painted greeny-grey – hardly an iconic figure. The pacing stutters between killings because Wright has no idea how to shoot dialogue or develop characters, making every event feel stilted. Consequently it’s an entirely inconsequential ninety-one minutes of poorly played schlock that brings nothing new to either the comedy or horror genres.

The screenplay by newcomer Stephen Prentice shows his lack of experience. The story is based on a soapy central conceit; that of a bullied child taking his own life. It is then tacked onto a paper-thin slasher movie plot that jumps right into the revelation that the killer is a supernatural being. It doesn’t even give the audience the option of believing it might be a living being taking revenge on Darren’s behalf, which might have made it a tenser, more interesting movie. Although to be fair the big reveal is diminished most by the paucity of the effects work, rather than the writing. The way the teenagers are portrayed suggests Prentice has watched too many episodes of “Skins”. Instead of worrying about how they look and if anyone fancies them, the popular kids spend all their time either going to destructive house parties, talking about sex or having sex. Meanwhile the geeks while away their time listening to self-indulgent emo or having girl crushes on Keira Knightley. The weird thing is that event though they are at school, they don’t appear to do any work and although they all live at home, there is a surprising lack of adult supervision.

The characterisation is irreparably damaged by the lack of likeable characters. Even the supposedly goody-two-shoes Justine is too selfish to be sympathetic. Indeed all the teenage players are completely self-absorbed. Bradley is an arrogant rich kid who spends all his time making other peoples’ lives a misery. His girlfriend Tasha is a stuck-up bitch, her friends Sophie and Khallilah are Sloaney tag-alongs who bully out of boredom, while Marcus is the muscle and Alexis is the only slightly nice character whose interest in Justine is sadly just a lazy plot motor. The emos exist as melodramatic figures of fun whose obsession with death is clearly an affectation. The teachers are also gross stereotypes – the authoritarian headmaster who doesn’t take his pupils seriously, the dizzy art teacher and the vicious PE master who just wants to make the weaklings’ lives hell. As villains go, Darren Mullet is something of a let-down; his signature is his asthma inhaler, but beyond that, he just looks like a fat green kid. Okay, he may be remorseless, but his impassivity and the way he doesn’t even listen to his victims’ pleas makes him a rather bland addition to the canon of slasher movie bad guys. The dialogue reveals the screenwriter’s tin ear, suggesting he’s desperate to be down with the kids because none of it sounds natural or spontaneous. The characters swear for the sake of it and the insults are contrived.

The performances are of variable quality and I suspect the director hasn’t given the majority of the young actors the support they need, allowing a bizarre mix of pantomime and wooden turns to rear their heads. Alex Pettyfer has been seriously miscast as the bullies’ ringleader Bradley. He’s obviously uncomfortable with playing the bad guy and overcompensates by overacting in every scene. It’s faintly embarrassing to watch him spit a line and then give an inward sigh and relax into himself. It makes for a deeply unconvincing and wooden performance. “Skins” star April Pearson plays nasty Tasha as a bitchier version of her TV character with even more slap. Larissa Wilson is a tag-along cow as Kallilah. Georgia King plays a variation on the rich bitch Sloane she was in “Wild Child”. Tom Hopper is clearly about ten years too old to play Marcus. Dimitri Leonidas bears more than a passing resemblance to Paolo Nutini as Alexis and comes across as quite nice. Tuppence Middleton convinces as fresh-faced innocent Justine, but is rather bland. Meanwhile Calvin Dean is required to do little other than stand around staring at people while wearing green make-up as Darren Mullet, so is hardly a memorable villain. To be honest Geoff Ball sticks in the mind more as the sadistic PE teacher.

The original music by Paul Hartnoll follows the current 80s trend with a score that mainly comprises synthesizer motifs slathered all over anything that is meant to be scary or exciting. These are interspersed with arrangements of reverberating percussion and echoing electric guitar. It adds to the sense of the movie being a throwback and feels like it has been ripped-off from an old John Carpenter score.

“Tormented” is a failure of a horror comedy that shoots itself in the foot by trying to be “down with the kids”. The direction suffers from juddering shifts in tone, the writing lacks any original twists and showcases a lack of characterisation and a poor grasp of dialogue. The acting is of variable quality and shows what happens when a director doesn’t give a young cast enough support. It isn’t funny enough to be considered a comedy or scary enough to count as a comedy. Oddly I suspect it will appeal to the fifteen to eighteen year-old demographic, if only because of the cast. But for hardcore horror fans, there’s nothing to trouble your dreams. 

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