Die, review

The new horror movie, Die, starts off with six people waking up in a basement in cells. They are then forced to take part in a dice game where each role of the dice has an effect on someone else in captivity. In the movie there are several punishment dished out on the captives and some of these are fatal where as some are completely harmless. These include one of the characters having their blood drained, another being drowned and shot.

The group soon find out that they are all people who had survived suicide attempts and now the way they choose to attempt to take their life is being used on another person. While they are being forced to play this game a detective, who is the partner of one of the people of been captured, is trying to find out where their partner has gone. She discovers a cult that has been set up by the wealthy, but mentally unstable, John Odessa that revolves around people deciding the fate through the roll of the dice.

The movie is clearly designed to imitate Saw in certain ways, and the imprisonment of strangers is certainly nothing new to those who have seen the Saw movies. The movie is also very similar in the way that the captor has vast ingenuity and fiendishness. It also shares the similarity that there are two plotlines, one following the people who are captured and one following a detective trying to rescue them.

It has already been stated by the producers of the movie that they are not going to be releasing a huge number of sequels like we saw with the Saw franchise. Also, the movie is quite a bit tamer than Saw and could be edited for broadcast on television. If you cut the various torture scenes out of Saw you wouldn’t really have anything left to broadcast, and this is especially true of the sequels to the original movie.

The film is not very convincing and those who see it will probably get the impression that the creative team were told to go and make a movie similar to Saw so that they could cash in. Dominic James directs the movie and there are some scenes which he makes convincingly but in general tension is lacking in the film. John Pyper-Ferguson clearly makes a strong effort in his role as he tries to imitate Tobin Bell but unfortunately the character never seems to move much deeper than being able to produce an enigmatic smile.

In general, the script doesn’t really have anything that will spike a viewers interest that much and there are no unexpected revelations or twists. The end of the movie is also quite a disappointment and when the motivation behind the main character is revealed viewers will find it wholly unconvincing and lacking in sense.