Torment (2013)

Torment

IMDB rate: 4,9

Genre: Slasher

Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Robin Dunne

Recently I decided to watch Torment on Netflix because I was pretty interested by it's poster. On the poster we see a mouse mask which looked pretty cool. Personally I'm a big fan of killers with creepy masks, gives a nice vibe to the story. Torment actually isn't much of a good movie, it starts of pretty good, but suddenly begins with stupid actions which makes it quite unrealistic. 

Here's what it's about:

Newlyweds Cory and Sarah Morgan take Cory's 7-year old son Liam up to the country for some much needed family time. When it appears as if Liam has run away, psychological suspense becomes straight-out horror, as Sarah and Cory must now confront a sadistic cult-like family who have been hiding in the house all along and have taken Liam for themselves.

Katherine Isabelle plays the main character Sarah Morgan. As we all know, Katherine Isabelle is not a stranger to horror movies. She played in American Mary, Ginger Snaps and this year released See No Evil 2. So Katherine Isabelle was a welcome face to this movie. Her role is a bit more grown up compared to her other roles, which was actually a bit strange since she's still extremely young looking (mid 20's?). In this movie she acted pretty good, but unfortunately she was the only one. I was especially annoyed with the young boy Liam, played by Peter DaCunha. His acting was not very good and his voice was incredibly emotionless. Pretty annoying since he was quite important for this movie. His character is the biggest dick as well, he really has no manners at all it seems. He also never listens to his father, which of course leads to some messed up situations. 

At first I thought this movie would be something like The Strangers. This isn't a bad thing because I think The Strangers is an incredibly good movie. It did start out to be something like The Strangers, but suddenly goes a very different way with kidnapping children to form a family. This beginning was pretty tensive and even somewhat scary, but when the story suddenly changes direction, it also changes the whole scary vibe it has. The masks these people are wearing are genuinely scary and do have a lot of scaring potential, unfortunately the story did not have enough potential to live up to these creepy masks. 

Most of the movie is set during the night, which makes it very hard to keep track of what is happening. Sometimes you are supposed to see something happen, but because it's so dark you have no idea what's going on. That's something quite useful about these subtitles since they sometimes describe the sounds, so that way you still know a bit what's going on. 

Speaking of the dark, if you're being chased by a few psychopaths, would you ever consider to fire your flare gun multiple times? Just because you can't see? Sure, one time might be possible, someone in town might see it and calls the cops, plus you see something for yourself. But firing this thing 4/5 times? Really? Some way to let the psychopaths know where you're hiding... I think if she would've wait a few minutes her eyes would've gotten used to the dark, patience was all she needed. 

The so-called twist in this movie is pretty lame, and unbelievable as well. It's a very useless fact, just as letting the people know that one of these guys is ugly. Why would that matter? He sure already is ugly on the inside, why would his looks matter?

Torment is not a very good movie. It started off with great potential, but chose to go a so-called original way instead. This original way did not turn out very great, which was kinda sad. Acting is pretty mixed up, some actors were great while others weren't good at all. Wouldn't recommend watching this movie.

My rate: 4/10