Plot: A murderous luddite in a fu*ked up cheesecloth mask sends out a chain letter to various high school kids with the lone admonishment: forward the email to five people or die! As Jesse (Nikki Reed) and her friends try to figure what the hell is going on, Chain Man gorily fells students one by one, every time using an elaborate chain contraption that reduces his victims to a pile of eviscerated pulp.
Review: Ever get one of those lame ass chain letter emails that promise ill will if you don’t pass the shite along? Well, director Deon Taylor (DEAD TONE, NITE TALES) has taken that premise to the extreme in his new feature CHAIN LETTER, a goofily nihilistic bloodbath that, save for a few gauche scenes, has decent enough acting to carry a low budget torture flick of its ilk through to the end. A great picture? Not terribly. A scary picture? Not so much. A pretty entertaining grue-gala with elaborate kills and a sense of humor that doesn’t take itself too seriously? A big fat fu*kin’ check baby!
After opening with a rather sadistic foreshadow, we meet Jesse Campbell (Reed), a typical modern day teen (which is to say, she’s plugged in). After being somewhat startled by the denouncement of technology by her creepy ass teacher Mr. Smirker (Brad Dourif), Jesse turns to her friend Rachael (Cherilyn Wilson) for reassurance. Soon Rachael’s brother Neil (Cody Kasch) receives a sinister email threatening to take his life if he fails to pass the letter on to five people. He complies, but the recipients don’t, and soon the school jockstrap gets savagely chained to death. Cue Detective Jim Crenshaw (Keith David) and Sergeant Hamill (Betsy Russell, still packin’ more bust than Canton, Ohio) who suss that our killer, as mysterious as he remains throughout, was once part of an anti-technology sect that used to terrorize various organizations. We also learn our perp used to toil in a meat packing plant, his family supplying large custom-made chains to the joint. Of course, as our Five-O put all this together, teens keep getting their pretty little heads liquefied into puddles of viscera.
The main themes of the CHAIN LETTER lie within the role of technology and the issue of privacy therein. A little heavy handed, but what Taylor is getting at (along with writers Diana Erwin and Michael J. Pagan) is all the gizmos and gadgets we indulge in quotidian actually do more harm than good. To say it’ll lead to such extremes is obviously hyperbolic, a choice I found more humor in than any real merited discourse on the ill-effects of technology (and this comes from a cat still rockin’ an antenna on his cell phone, so I’m not hard to convert on this matter). Even still, I had a pretty good time with the picture. But just because I had a good time with the absurdity of the film, it doesn’t mean it happens to be the highest of quality. Just like every cool movie you see doesn’t necessarily make it a quality one. And while CHAIN LETTER is definitely a cut above the lot of dross we see around here, there are many scenes that just don’t work. Thankfully Nikki Reed single handedly rescues a handful of scenes from entering insufferable mediocrity.
What I really dug about CHAIN LETTER was its bleak conclusion, ungodly amount of carnage and crazy-imaginative fatalities. There’s also this thing where Chain Man, straight out of the Voorhees playbook from say JASON LIVES, superhumanly bursts through entire walls and windows as if it were a shred of finish line tape. And at the most random and unexpected times. Silly, yes…but damn good fun! Problem is, many scenes outside the F/X driven terror get mired somewhere between the boring and unbelievable. Dourif is criminally underutilized, as is Betsy Russell. And I hate to say it, but I can think of at least two scenes involving Keith David that instantly take you out of the flow of the picture. Strange, dude’s such a rad actor. Guess it’s a classic example of a good actor being hampered by a poorly written part. Still good to see the man working though, that’s for certain.
All in all, CHAIN LETTER is diversionary entertainment, nothing more nothing less. By no means does it reinvent the wheel, but is has enough moments to recommend to those who enjoy the exorbitant stalk-and-slash approach to horror. The story does meander, especially in the second reel (where the hell are the Connor parents?), but the acting is serviceable enough (with real shining moments from Reed…who looks mad sexy in glasses btw) to keep you watching. I had fun with the picture, fully recognizing it’s no work of art or anything likely to be submitted to the American Film Institute. It more or less succeeds at what it aims for, I think, which is to be a fun, sick, effectively gory low-budget horror flick.
Rating: 7/10