Taken with last week's superior You're Next, this dreary slasher would suggest we're in for a raft of horror runaround pitting representatives of the 1% against the murderously aggrieved remainder. Here, it's a psychopath wrestling a set of backwoods ne'er-do-wells for possession of the brittle blonde heiress he's kidnapped. Director Ryuhei Kitamura ladles on the entrails like a ghoulish dinnerlady, but his three-way narrative strategies lead nowhere: the film's switching between the fictional equivalents of Ted Bundy, the Manson family and Paris Hilton, without realising this gives us no one we might remotelygive a hoot about.
"0" height="276" width="460">Splashes of gore and evisceration combine with a nicely nasty psycho-killer turn from Luke Evans to enliven this grindy slasher from Midnight Meat Train director Ryuhei Kitamura. When stereotypical hoodlums turn over the wrong couple in a remote diner, twisty table-turning retribution ensues. Shooting on Super-16 (rather than digital), cinematographer Daniel Pearl achieves a neat balance between old-school grain and modern sheen, thankfully eschewing the tedious turd-brown-palette that has become de rigueur. David Cohen's table-turning script owes a debt to Jennifer Lynch's disreputable back-catalogue – his next project, Underground, is a "journey into the world of extreme cuisine" to which director Neil Marshall was reportedly attached. Waiter!