Film Review: Tormented
Tormented (2009)
Studio: Pathe/BBC Films
DVD Release Date (UK): May 22, 2009
Directed By: Jon Wright
Cast: Alex Pettyfer, Tuppence Middleton, Dimitri Leonidas, April Pearson, Georgia King
Review By: Benjamin Bussey
Justine (Middleton) is the walking definition of a goody two-shoes, Head Girl at her upscale high school with a place at Oxford waiting for her. But after she speaks at the funeral of a Dean Mullett, classmate who committed suicide – a boy she never even knew existed – things take an unexpected turn. Lured to an in-crowd party thrown by the most popular boy in school (Pettyfer), Justine finds romance with a young lothario (Leonidas) and is soon enough being accepted as one of the cool kids. But things are not as cool for the cool kids as it initially seems, as it quickly becomes apparent that it was their bullying behaviour that lead Mullett to take his own life. On top of which, Justine soon learns that while she didn’t know the dead kid from Adam, he knew her. And when bad things start happening, the cool kids begin to wonder whether Mullett really is dead after all.
Yup, we’re in pretty well-trod slasher territory here. My gut feeling going into Tormented, from the pretty young cast and the familiarity of the premise, was that it was going to be little more than a contrived attempt by British filmmakers to capture the international market. The resulting film has a little more on its agenda than that, but not a massive amount more. It’s a film at pains to emphasise just how sexy and glamorous its stars are, painting a picture of a Britain that, from this writer’s experience (i.e., a British upbringing), doesn’t actually exist. For starters – pool parties? Maybe it’s just me, but outdoor swimming and the British weather tend not to go hand in hand. On top of which, I’m not sure how commonplace the antediluvian Head Girl/Head Boy prefect system is in non-private schools these days, outside of the Harry Potter-verse. But I might be wrong. It’s been a while since I went to school. Back in my day, the hard kids were content to merely beat you and humiliate you in front of everyone, without having to record it on a cameraphone and broadcast it online. We just didn’t have those kind of options when I were a lad.
Indeed, the most favourable thing that can be said about Tormented is that it does paint a harsh, believable picture of school bullying. From the very first scene openly mocking the recently deceased at his funeral, the in-crowd kids are utterly loathsome. But the script is smart enough to delve deeper into how such victimisation works, showing how both teachers and fellow students turn a blind eye and expect the victims to just deal with it. The movie shows how on some level all are culpable, and the killer takes a very black and white view.
The problem is how ill at ease this fairly intelligent issue-based content sits with the horror elements. (Indeed, this seems to be a common problem with British horror of late; last year’s The Children was far more effective as a family drama than a supernatural shocker.) Director Wright seems to be aiming for old-school slasher excess, each successive murder that bit more absurd than the last. Unfortunately, both the tone of the murders and the rather feeble make-up effects mean the death scenes are far too silly to be remotely scary, with a particularly silly swimming pool death and art-room dismemberment, and a truly absurd eleventh-hour Achilles heel for the big bad. Nothing wrong with comical content in a slasher, of course, but when the movie is attempting to be serious the rest of the time it’s akin to scuppering your own ship. Still, there a few memorable deaths (watch out for the pencils), and, unusually for this kind of movie, there’s a great deal more male flesh on show than female. Matters would have been helped considerably, though, if the whole thing wasn’t so lazily photographed and edited. I’ve done shits that were more aesthetically interesting.
Tormented may have its heart in the right place, but disappointingly it never gets it arse into gear. Like so many British teen horrors before it – The Hole, Spirit Trap, Long Time Dead etc. – it underestimates its audience, putting all its energy into aping the look of glossy US teen movies without any effort to create something truly fulfilling. The result is like a salad from McDonald’s: it might be striving to convey sophistication, and it might not taste too bad going down, but it’s still just junk food, disposable and ultimately forgettable.
Brutal As Hell Rating:
2 out of 5
