Chain Letter

Year of Release: 2010
Genre:  Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 4 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 0.5 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

This movie made me terribly sad. As a reviewer it really breaks my heart to sit through a movie and watch as the director just loses more and more control over his creation. Some movies may miss the mark and some movies may forget to have things happen, but this movie just didn’t know how to end. Poor little creature. My psychic horror senses tell me that the director started off with a great plan, but as the story tried to develop itself the movie just got away from him and when it hit the 90 minute runtime mark he threw his hands up and said, “Right! Stop the cameras, we’re ending the movie here!” There’s no great character development, there’s no real insight into who the killer is or why he’s doing what he’s doing and, because the movie just ends, there’s no kind of solution offered. Plus there’s no real suspense at any point that may have kept this little train on the tracks. That said, it is a fun watch if you like to see the many creative ways that people can be killed with an excessive number of chains!

I do like it when my death threats come and they've been tastefully put together.

Being one of those movies that centres around high school kids a number of rules apply: we have jocks, we have sluts, we have one clever brunette and one dorky younger brother. Also, everyone’s well into their 20s. The dorky younger brother just happens to be Zack Young from Desperate Housewives. Whilst playing an intense game of WoW he receives a beautifully put together chain letter that tells him to send it on to 5 people within 24 hours. Since his sister Rachael needs to use the computer she throws him off and, believing in the immense power of chain letters, decides to forward it on but only includes 4 recipients. When Neil (Zack Young’s alter ego in this movie) finally manages to get his computer back he notices her mistake and adds her as the 5th recipient and sends the chain letter along.

Primitive eyewear was not a pretty thing.

Here’s where things start to go bloodshedingly wrong for our semi-group of 20-something highschool kids. You see while Rachael had sent the chain letter onto her friends the e-mail itself was coming from Neil’s account and, since he’s horribly unpopular, none of the friends take it very seriously and delete the e-mail. This is where our first victim Johnny Jones comes into the picture. After enjoying a nice little shot of growth hormones and a 3 minute gym session he goes to get some water. While drinking at the fountain he finds his head being repeatedly rammed into its delicate metal features and loses some teeth in the process. He is then dragged to another corner of the gym where our killer gets to work with his many, many chains. Like cooking, brutal slayings require a decent recipe: first of all you handcuff the victim to the chains. Once done you truss the victim up and lift them off the ground with some more chains to ensure that the arms pop out the sockets. You then slash their Achille’s heel, making it impossible for them to escape. You then take EVEN MORE CHAINS and proceed to grind their face into a smooth, delicate paste before making your escape into the night. In case you missed it: lots of chains. Chain Letter. What a clever little killer we have with us.

Something tells me a butterfly isn't gonna pop out of this thing...

In amongst all of this are a few ancillary characters of which the most important is Jessie. She’s good-looking but she’s brunette and occasionally wears glasses so you know she’s the brains of the outfit. As the body count shuffles a little higher she decides to enlist the help of Neil and her friend Michael to try and stop the murders. For backup they have Detective Crenshaw trying to work out what’s going on back at Police HQ. Of course nobody’s better equipped to figure out who a psychopath is than a highschool girl taking a class in the dangers of technology and Jessie, despite already forwarding the chain letter on, tells everyone to send it to her again so that she can do some detective work of her own. With the aid of her glasses and Google she manages to figure out that the chain letter has a virus attached to it that infects cellphones and computers and allows the killer to use them as GPS units. This makes hunting his victims down much easier than in the good old days where killers had to lurk behind bushes for hours in the vague hope of a victim crossing their path. It’s then up to Jessie, Neil and Michael to save the day blah blah blah stop the killer blah blah blah redeem mankind’s belief in the joys of technology blah blah blah.

Chain Letter isn’t good, but it’s the good kind of not good that you can at least cock your head at in confusion and have a good laugh at.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Schools are a combination of socialising and football games. At most students may have 1 class a day.
• Right after water and food a phone is right up there with the basic things needed for a human to survive.
• Men have enormous engines put in their cars in the hopes of enticing gorgeous women.
• Killers who use an  excessive amount of chains are helping to keep an entire industry alive.
• High school kids never have parents that live with them.
• The phrase ‘why don’t you come get me?’ should not be thrown around lightly.
• Policemen on the phone sound a lot like telemarketers.
• You don’t put glasses on to read – you put glasses on to think.

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