There’s only one way out…
Main Cast: Theo Rossi, Taryn Manning
Director: Chris Moore
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
What would happen if Jason Vorhees had studied at the feet of John Kramer? Maybe instead of chasing down every single drunken, horny teen to cross his property line he’d have toyed with them a little longer. Maybe he would have killed one of them, and sent the rest of them a message. “Kill your friends. Whichever ONE of you is alive by 6:00 AM goes free. If more than one of you are alive, everybody dies.”
That’s the premise behind KILL THEORY, written by Kelly Palmer and directed by Chris Moore. And that’s pretty much all there is to it.
Seven college students on the verge of graduation retire for the weekend to the lake house of the group’s rich boy, Brent–that’s three couples and Freddy (Daniel Franzese), the token fat kid–only to find Brent’s stepsister Alex (Taryn Manning) is using the place, too. They all have dinner, get drunk, and go to bed. And they’re all startled awake at 3:00 in the morning by the body of Nicole (Steffi Wickens) crashing through the window with instructions that lead them to a video camera hooked up to the television with their ultimatum. Kill your friends by 6:00 or everybody dies. Only one of them will be allowed to leave the place alive, it’s going to be up to the law of natural selection to determine who.
This movie is about as cliché and predictable as you can get. Every character is an archetype, and every move they make is predetermined from the first frame. Carlos (Theo Rossi, “Sons of Anarchy”) is the party boy, his girlfriend (Nicole) a non-entity. Michael (Patrick John Flueger) is the good guy whose moral compass is unshakable, while his girlfriend, Jen (Agnes Bruckner) is also on the straight and narrow, but with a hint of chickenshit about her, so you know when it comes down to it she’s gonna do whatever she needs to to survive. Brent (Teddy Dunn) is the arrogant rich kid who exhibits sociopathic tendencies as far as putting other people first is concerned, and his girlfriend, Amber (Ryanne Duzich), knows it. She doesn’t mind, though; she’s secretly in love with Michael. It’s like Palmer wasn’t even TRYING for a hint of originality when he was putting this thing together. Insert Character A into Scene 1, find your mark, recite hip dialogue, swig Cuervo, annnnnd scene! (On the other hand, I realize it’s entirely possible I’m just too old to like these characters.)
KILL THEORY straddles a very delicate line between wanting to be like all the other slasher flicks – and make no mistake, even though the kids are supposed to be killing each other, that’s exactly what this movie is – and wanting to do something new with the standard slasher flick. But for me there’s just too much about this movie that’s interchangeable with all the others. Hell, 90% of the shots could have been lifted directly from the then-recent FRIDAY THE 13th remake. Everything from camera angles to lighting, it’s like Moore used that as his template to get the right look. While there may have been a bit more story here than the standard fare, visually it’s same old same old.
And speaking of that story, while I think Palmer took the easy out with stock characters, his premise does provide for some pretty tense sequences, and major character turning points. Palmer says in a behind the scenes featurette that he hopes viewers will try to put themselves in that position and figure out which character they would be, which choices they would make, and I think to some degree he succeeded, but I think these what-ifs play most effectively in the group situations.
See, KILL THEORY has its moments, I just think it could have had more of them, and it could have been more interested in breaking away from the mold a little more. No matter how much tension the story holds, it’s still peopled by that dumb cast of stock characters, and I can’t get past it.
And then there’s the motivation. We know Jason is just plain nuts, we know he has mommy issues and that trying to find a reason for his actions is pointless. We know why John Kramer did what he did, his motives were clear from the first SAW movie. The killer in KILL THEORY is revealed in the opening scene to be a recent inmate in a psychiatric facility, serving time for killing his friends. However, for about 99% of the movie, I could not figure out how the hell any of that played into his motivation for the game he plays with these kids, and I was praying to God and the Saints Whannell and Wan it wasn’t something so weak as “he’s just crazy.” I thank all the deities for the movie’s final minute for bringing everything full circle and giving the previous 84 minutes a purpose. It might not seem like it for almost all the movie, but stick with it; there IS a clear and, in my opinion, well-conceived motive.
I don’t think KILL THEORY is a bad movie, it’s just not as good as it could have been. The premise is interesting, slightly original, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Given Moore’s CV (REINDEER GAMES, JOYRIDE, the FEAST trilogy), I expected more than a rehash of a remake in terms of visual style. But maybe that’s why he’s usually the producer and not the director.
Read more 8 Films to Die For reviews
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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