Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Nigel P A British teen horror then. Instead of posturing braggarts and plenty of arrogance, we have coy-eyed girls and clean, well-spoken boys. And a bit of arrogance. The wistful adolescent gossip concerning broken relationships and broken hearts that fuels any shallow character development hardly endears the young characters - although the cast do what they can. It actually took me a couple of attempts to get past establishing scenes rammed with 'as if' and 'whatever'.Six cadets - three girls, tree boys and not a blemish between them - take part in a night-time training exercise on the same evening two hapless burglars decide to rob the archives. The school they are patrolling seems to have had a gruesome history and so it is no real surprise (to the audience at least) when modest but effecftive horrific occurrences occasionally crop up.Of the burglars, Jazz is the downtrodden incompetent, with actor Ameet Chana injecting the same level of appealing ham-fisted qualities he did in his short-lived run in UK soap EastEnders. Will Thorpe is very good as his bad-boy co-conspirator Shane, and Rachel Petladwala makes a good impression as Meena Shah. In fact, the cast as a whole give good performances when their dialogue doesn't revolve around teen-speak clichés.As things go on, the pace improves but there is a distinct lack of tension and scares. Technically very competent but hardly edge-of-the-seat stuff, until the end, that is, when a few decent twists present themselves and the finale is nicely fitting thanks to unexpected parties. Not essential, but worth 93 minutes of your time.

chet19 You might think it's a good thing that they avoided certain horror stereotypes, but in this film they really needed those stereotypes. For example, it was 6 teens in a haunted house, but no one snuck in drugs. No one got naked (on camera anyway). None of the killings was gory, and the main bad guy was shot and killed by another bad guy (meaning that our heroes really didn't do anything themselves). A teen horror movie with no blood, no nudity, and no excitement? Coulda been a lot better. There were also unoriginal things that didn't work well, such as the power being cut, creatures lurking in the background who are never explained, etc.

David Roggenkamp About three and a half centuries before the present time; an arc lord of sorts haunts a school campus and murders the four best students. They are murdered in the fashion of the time by the elements of fire (burned alive), air (hanging), earth (buried alive), and water (drowned). Fast forward and a bunch of military cadets are expected to patrol the campus on the nearly three and a half century anniversary of the incident. A few of them are on edge, the rest just don't know why they have to be patrolling the grounds. According to their commanding officer it is quite simple really - either patrol the grounds or they don't get into the college of their choice. The patrol has a few of the cadets that take it seriously, to the rest it is sort of a joke where they kill time. The patrol starts out with them as expected. There are a number of fake scares along the way, before those fake scares start to turn into the main 'ghosts' of the movie. To mix things up, the movie includes two burglars that want to get to the school's archive.I want to say more about the movie, but I ended up falling asleep during the middle segments - so I assume it wasn't that interesting. All I remember is people walking around with more jump scares and close calls that turn out to be false alarms.When I finally did wake up the movie was starting to get interesting again. I won't spoil it; but the four spirits are merely a sideplot compared to the betrayal that occurs. The cadets ended up in for a bit more than they bargained for, but what horror movie doesn't follow this trope?I found the character interaction to be a good thing; but the characterization implied the characters had a bit of an inner circle going on - something that isn't known to the audience. Otherwise the character interactions felt spot on as far as a movie is concerned. I didn't mind the jump scares and I found they built up a little bit of suspense and gave a false sense of security build up for when the real horror finally began. Do I recommend the movie? Yes - but be warned, the movie starts out good, and slowly starts to wind down as it progresses.Originally posted to Orion Age (http://www.orionphysics.com/? p=11516).

begob Six cadets perform a night-time training exercise in their out-of-term school, only to find the place infested with burglars and ghouls.Ah - Brit horror, why do you torment me so? This one is not the worst, and it does have some bounce to it, with a steady build to the climax. The actors do well, and some of the dialogue is good, although the usual problem of unnecessary or underdeveloped characters runs all the way through. There is some decent humour, but the story is completely contrived in a mish-mash of genre, and in the end the elements are forced together like repulsing magnets.All the clichés of horror are poorly done - jump scares, figures in the background, sudden noises. Some comical moments - two characters run like hell from ... what? + characters come clattering down a stairs an unfeasibly long time after the sound that attracted them and ask breathless questions. And surely the prologue could have been done with less staginess and better attention to detail - the quill writing was total cheese. And it suffers the usual British coyness about sex and gore.The music was varied, sometimes impressive, sometimes ho-hum or inappropriate.This is low budget, so it deserves some forbearance, but you can't get around the basic problem with the story: it's about as plausible and menacing as an episode of Scooby Doo.Why can't the Brits do horror like indie American, or the French or Spanish?