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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2002
Country of origin:	UK / USA / France / Canada
Director:	Marc Evans
Genre:	Paranoid chiller
Starring:	Sean Cw Johnson, Kris Lemche, Stephen O'Reilly, Laura Regan, Jennifer Sky, Bradley Cooper
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280969/
Tagline:	Fear Is Not Knowing. Terror Is Finding Out.
Favourite line:	"Hey, psycho! Come on in. It's nice in here. We got food. And women."

Small scale Brit reality horror.

The plot:
Five young things enter a Big Brother style competition, though this one is perhaps a touch more extreme.
The house itself is in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, in the midst of winter. No way in. No way out. The rules are simple enough: spend six months in the same house with the four other contestants, and win $1,000,000. Anyone leaves, you all lose.
With the end of the six months looming, the relationships in the house are fractious, though manageable.
Suddenly, the company behind the game seemingly starts to play games with them: Instead of a box of food, they are sent a box of bricks.
Champagne arrives but, with it, a gun loaded with five bullets.
Then they start to think there is someone else in the house with them.
When a stranger appears out of nowhere, claiming to be skiing, tensions escalate further as he seduces one of the female contestants. Shortly after his departure, one of the contestants hangs himself.
Then they discover the ‘diary room’ is not what it seems, and that the website streaming the competition is not exactly as they imagined……

Decent, boiled down concept this, and pretty well delivered.
The five leads are certainly proficient, particularly the women, who suitably capture the fear and paranoia implicit in the set-up.
With a minimal budget, much is made of the location, a truly depressing, foreboding place, that suggests nought but desolation; isolation; despair.
Eschewing typical horror conventions to begin with, this pitches for dramatic moodiness and, for the most part, captures it but, be warned, by the end, we are in full on slasher mode, which seems to irritate some reviewers, but which seems perfectly in keeping with the tone as far as I’m concerned.
Clever enough, if a little contrived – you will see some of the twists sign-posted just a shade too early, particularly if you know your genre stuff – still, it’s nice to see a British director taking the horror format and giving it a little shake, just to wake our American cousins up.
Not perfect, but liked this well enough.