Tormented
Actors: Alex Pettyfer
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Running time: 91 minutes
The suicide of a student should throw a school into some sort of moral outcry, but Darren Mullet (Dean) wasn't popular; he had no friends and was bullied by the rich clique, headed up by Bradley (Pettyfer, channelling some of James Spader's '80s teen asshole shtick). In fact, Darren's death has so little consequence with anyone at the school, they throw a house party the night of his funeral. So it would be justice then if Darren came back from the dead and started offing the bullies in ways that mirror the style they tormented him, right?
A British comedy-horror in the vein of Severance, Tormented attempts to marry gruesome deaths with off-the-wall humour. Where as Severance managed to keep the horror horrific and the humour funny without diluting either, Tormented's low laugh quota and its cartoon violence have the end result of a Grange Hill Halloween Special - it isn't funny enough or scary enough to pull of what it's trying to do. The humour comes in the form of the Emo kids, with their "Death is so erogenous. I wish I was dead," mentality, their oddly named bands (Crying While W**king was one) and the shocking deaths. Death by pencil up the nose, death by loud music (a failed attempt it has to be said, but full marks for effort), castrations, impalements, and beheadings are the order of the day but all are, if you excuse the pun, poorly executed. There's no build up to the killings - we get a shaky, off colour (and annoying) POV of the killer before he does his thing.
Towards the climax, the mood shifts as the audience is treated to flashbacks of Darren's humiliations at the hands of the clique; it's a clever tone swing, with Wright reminding us that although what we're watching is a fantasy, it is rooted in reality. Wright also plays around with the idea that all this isn't really happening; the class discussion of Hamlet's ghost would suggest so but that's up for debate.
