8) TORMENTED

Director: Jon Wright
Stars: Alex Pettyfer, April Pearson, Dimitri Leonidas, Tuppence Middleton, Calvin Dean, Georgia King, Mary Nighy, Olly Alexander, Tom Hopper, James Floyd
Year: 2009
Rating: N/R

A nifty little British horror flick that is surprisingly good - with equal dashes of suspense, humor and violence - Tormented, billing itself as "a slasher movie for the Skins generation," is about a set of British high school teens who are attractive, privileged, and rule the school ... and the class nerd they tormented for months, before the kid finally committed suicide.

The film does, in fact, start out at the funeral of Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean) - with the school's head girl, Justine (Tuppence Middleton) in charge of delivering the boy's eulogy. It is painfully obvious, from the start, that Justine didn't know Darren at all, and in fact causes Darren's best friend Jason (Olly Alexander) to disrupt the funeral and call her out.

Afterward, Justine is comforted by fellow classmate Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas), an attractive guy who obviously likes her. Justine likes the attention, and through Alexis is eventually invited into his circle of special friends - led by the vain, manipulative, mean-spirited Bradley (Alex Pettyfer). Turns out, in fact, that Alexis' friends are all a bunch of unlikable creeps - but as they're the cool kids, and as Justine really likes Alexis, she sort of decides to temporarily go along for the ride.

That is, until they start to die, one by one and in violent ways, seemingly at the hand of Darren Mullet - who has come back from the grave to enact his revenge. As Justine slowly learns just what role her new friends had in Darren's suicide, the body count rises and Justine learns that she may have not only been added to the list ... but moved to the top of it.

On the surface, Tormented might seem just like any other slasher/horror flick, but there are some really cool, subtle differences; little tweaks that make the film unique in its own way. You get some nice insight to Darren Mullet while he was alive, via video footage, and see the bulky, overweight asthmatic being tormented by his classmates ... which makes things more surreal later when, though Darren is dead, he still uses his inhaler to breathe. I also very much liked Alexis' character (and Dimitri Leonidas, who as Alexis is one of the best reasons to watch the film); without him acting as the bridge between Justine and his nasty friends, you wouldn't give a damn about the friends when they start dying. It's Alexis' regret over what happened, his desire to repent for what he and his friends did to Darren while Darren was alive, that makes you even remotely care about what happens to the others, in the end. And though there are a couple of fairly violent scenes, the film isn't a total gorefest like so many of its American counterparts have become. Even the humor is well-done, self-deprecating and keeping things a little light in between all the scares and giving the film a nice balance.

Overall, the film is a nice little thriller about the ghosts that come back to haunt us - in this case, literally. A really enjoyable thriller, with a good-looking cast of victims. ***1/2 - Reel Cool-Reel Awesome