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High school kid Brent (Teddy Dunn), a bit of a selfish asshole, invites
his friends to his parents' house in the woods to party. What neither
Brent nor any of the other kids knew though was that there's a killer
(Kevin Gage) on the prowl in the woods, and this killer has an extremely
mean modus operandi: He forces his victims to kill each other, and if
there's just one survivor the next day, he lets him/her go ... if there are
more, he kills all of them. Why does he do it? Because he once had to
kill his friends in a climbing accident to save his own life, and now he
wants to prove to himself that anyone in his place would have made the
same decision. When one of the girls (Steffi Wickens) is found dead and
a guy (Theo Rossi) falls prey to a bear trap, the kids start to realize
what kind of a psycho they're up against, and while the others try to
stick together and find a way out of the whole mess, Brent tries to fight
his way out of the situation, even if that means killing his own sister
(Taryn Manning). Still, Brent gets his just desserts when he leaves his
own girlfriend Amber (Ryanne Duzich) to fend for herself - and she
retaliates in killing him to save the others. Eventually, the teens are
down to three, Michael (Patrick Flueger), the too-good-to-be-true hero of
the piece, his girlfriend Jenna (Agnes Bruckner), and Amber, who's
secretly in love with Michael. Eventually, Jenna shows her true face when
she tries to kill Amber and even Michael, but ultimately she too gets her
just desserts. With only him and Amber alive, Michael makes the ultimate
sacrifice killing himself to save her ... and the killer makes good his
promise and lets her go ... And now for the punchline: Brent was
actually the son of the psychiatrist (Don McManus) who was treating the
killer after the climbing accident and who claimed not everybody would have made
the same decision of killing his friends to save his own life ... The
premise of Kill Theory, despite being extremely far-fetched and somewhat
reminiscent of the first Saw, is a
fascinating one and could have made the basis for a landmark horror film -
which unfortunately Kill Theory isn't: Despite its novel story
approach, the movie tries to do everything to look and feel just like
every other teen slasher of its day, a film that tells you in its first
ten minutes who's going to die when and who's going to survive (and I'm
almost inclined to claim it even gives Michael's ultimate sacrifice away),
and a film that uses all slasher mainstays (remote house, no phone
reception, broken down car) to make everything as similar (and
forgettable) as possible. The postergirls and -boys in the cast also seem
to be meant to derive the film of its edges (though for a change, most of
them actually can act), as are Kill Theory's conservative gender
stereotypes: While most of the fighting, saving and killing is left to the
male characters, the girls (up to the finale at least) are left cowering in
corners waiting to be saved, and the one girl who shows some initiative of
her own (Taryn Manning, the highlight of the film acting-wise) is
killed off early on. All this said, I have to admit I have been
entertained way worse, this one is actually an ok contemporary slasher -
it's just nowhere near where it could have been.
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find Kill Theory at adultvideouniverse.com
