Splintered (2010)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Sophie(Holly Weston)is interested in the strange and unusual, her mother's alcoholism and absent father contributing to her morbid curiosities. Sophie wants to see if a legendary "beast of Bodmin " exists and gets her best friend, Jane(Sadie Pickering)to round up some of her friends to go find it, camping out in the woods where it was reputed to have attacked a man and ate his sheep. Tagging along are Jane's boyfriend, Sam(Sacha Dhawan), Sam's pal, Gavin(Stephen Walters), and Jane's brother, Dean(Jonathan Readwin). What none of them know is that an escaped lunatic(Stephen Walters)is lurking about, making his residence an abandoned Catholic children's home, St Joseph's. This troubled young man believes he must protect Sophie(she represents the Virgin Mary, pure and undefiled) from a creature(his own brother, pretty much a human animal)and this herein lies the suspense of the plot..how the hell will Sophie escape from the confines of a cell which is latched from the outside(this detail might just explain why the maniac is so disturbed, his terrifying upbringing in a children's home thanks to a sadistic priest). Is the one imprisoning her actually the person she should be afraid of? A Father Thomas(Colin Tierney)is trying to find Gavin because of his mentor's murder.Murky horror picture following a savage whose cannibalistic ways derived from being kept in a cage with the dogs. Kids out in the woods running across a human beast who tears into them with ferocity. Sophie is connected to Gavin and his brother Vincent, a certain murder which has remained with her, this the cause of those night terrors which awaken her in a cold sweat. The film follows the color palate of the SAW films, shot in dirty brown and green, giving off a dreary, bleak look..quite dark even during the day. The violence is carefully hidden until we see the neck wounds resulting from Vincent's uncontrollable insatiable appetite for human flesh. Gavin isn't exactly held together well mentally, but his motives are sound..he just wants to keep Sophie safe and understands that his brother is a fiend, not responsible for his actions due to a priest's neglect. A great deal of time is spent in the dilapidated Catholic orphanage at night which is why you who decide to watch it may be squinting a lot trying to isolate details which are hard to visualize. Like in other movies, human monsters can take an exorbitant amount of punishment and continue after victims..a hatchet to the ribs, just a scratch, shovel shots to the body and head, easy to recover from. Vincent can even be hit by a car, enter the trunk while the vehicle is moving.

Saw this at the Grimm Up North! festival in Manchester, here are my thoughts...Splintered sets its focus on Sophie (Holly Weston), a troubled young girl haunted by the abuse she suffered as a child and harbouring a deep fascination with the unexplained. In the hope of satiating her obsession with the latter, our heroine instigates a trip to the Welsh countryside with four friends, aimed at tracking down the legendary Beast of Bodmin. It seems the mythical creature – often thought to be a large wildcat or fox – has caught the public's attention once more thanks to a spate of attacks on livestock and one local farmer. It is an opportunity Sophie has decided is not to be missed and, armed with a video camera and a case of beer, the group head off into the woods. However, they soon uncover much more than they bargained for, with the female lead falling foul of a mysterious madman who locks her away in an apparent attempt to protect her from some unnamed terror.The movie opens well with a great score and slick credit sequence, setting up a glossy tone filled with moments of gloomy shadows and chilling blue hues. From the first scene, in which we get a look at Sophie's childhood, it's clear this is a girl who is as damaged by the nightmares of her real life as she is the demons that fill her dreams while she sleeps. The Scooby gang we're introduced to shortly after are established quickly and, if I'm being honest, it wasn't too difficult to pick out which ones I would like to see on the wrong end of a meat hook later. Sam (Sacha Dhawan) plays the douchebag boyfriend of Sophie's limp, wet best mate Jane (Sadie Pickering). Elsewhere, the job of fancying our (extremely fancyable) lead falls to the rather blunt instrument that is John (Sol Heras) and the sensitive and sheepish Dean (Jonathan Readwin).One could argue Sophie is the typically isolated and haunted 'final girl' we've come to expect from the woodland slasher sub-genre, but I'd have to say that would also be grossly unfair. Getting beneath her layers and finding out what makes her tick is perhaps one of Splintered's most engaging elements, as she struggles to cope with the memories of her childhood abuser and the castrating power this has had in overcoming this new terror. This final girl has, initially, got more in common with the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Sally Hardesty; fleeing, screaming and generally being terrified. But it is in her Laurie Strode moments later – when forced to adapt, come up with solutions and face down both her internal and external demons – that she becomes so much more. In one scene the frame of a sliding prison door window id used to play out an escape attempt with a brick to dislodge the bolt that keeping her trapped. This not only sets up a simple intensity as her pursuer hacks away at a ribcage just a few doors away, it also gives Weston the chance to put in one of many great turns – no mean feat in a film focusing so closely on its young lead.Elsewhere, the other teen players are pretty solid, but unfortunately one or two of the interactions between Sam and Jane feel just a little stilted. These are particularly noticeable in moments placed next to the more intense and convincing confrontations between Sophie and Gavin (Stephen Martin Walters) – the deranged and twitchy schizophrenic who serves as her captor. One part psychotic nightmare and two parts damaged man-child, Gavin is wonderfully played as a grimy but multi-dimensional villain who is always just a step away from being revealed as simply misunderstood – much like his new found prisoner. But another special mention must go to Jonathan Readwin as Dean, who starts off as just a blank canvas with a crush, but ends up being one of the most alluring and funny characters on the screen. On a couple of occasions this lazy James Franco-esquire youngster is faced with some particularly ugly moments that are punctuated with a "Fah-kin hell" that gives things a gentle comic lift without being too jarring or silly.I can say in all honesty this is something I would wholeheartedly recommend. Sure, the basic outline of putting a bunch of teens in a forest is a little familiar, but this is only really used to set the psychological aspects of the narrative in motion. Besides, isn't 'terror in the woods' just another sub-genre of horror we've now come to know and love? And isn't criticising Splintered for using this much the same as saying George Romero's latest will be 'just another story where people die, come back to life and than try to eat other people'? The truth is, this flick has got some great ideas, solid performances, tense moments and a final girl that is as alluring to the mind as she is to the eye – and for me this is what counts in a movie of this kind. Splintered is just another example of a thriving UK horror community that continues to serve up antidotes to the dull-as-dishwater Saw films and the mindless remakes that fill our multiplexes for a week at a time over and over again. If you want scares, blood and some actual story, you'll be well served here.

I saw the UK Premier in Manchester. Due to a technical hitch, no dialogue was audible for the opening ten minutes; initially, I hadn't realised that this was accidental - believing it to be an intentional method of creating an eerie tone. Then, the projectionists remedied the problem and started the film over a again: the clunking dialogue destroyed this potential eeriness and any pathos one might have felt for the lead. "Splintered" failed to register in any sense: as a horror film, it wasn't frightening or emotionally resonant; one could not empathise with the protagonists; the acting was average-to-poor; the camera work and cinematography (aside from the closing frame - which looked relatively impressive and summed-up the main character's plight) generally added little; the writer's handling of a sensitive social issue was crass and perfunctory...I can't recommend the film in any sense.

I saw this film at the English premiere and felt compelled to write. This review contains spoilers.Synopsis: The film begins reasonably enough with a young girl ('Sophie') hiding from a monster that enters her room at night. I liked the way this scene was handled and felt there was a palpable sense of fear. However, I felt it went down hill from there. The film fast-forwards to the present day, where the girl has become a 'goth-lite' (to use a character's phrase) woman who enlists a group of her friends to go off in search of a mysterious animal that is terrorising livestock. The good: The locations looked suitably spooky, and I felt that unusually good use was made of the backdrop in the camping scene. Holly Weston ('Sophie') was able to convey most of the emotion of the part, particularly at the end, even if she looked a little too physically perfect (in my opinion). Stephen Martin Walters playing the saner brother, Gavin, was able to engage sympathy. The best part of the film is his final speech.The bad: Some of the dialogue is clunky, particularly between the teen group at the beginning. Some of the acting (particularly from the avenging priest) is extremely wooden. I'm a total coward, yet after the first five minutes, I didn't find this film even remotely scary - too many close-ups on people drooling just made it seem silly to me. I found the supporting teenagers to be too stereotypical for words, though 'Dean' did at least gain sympathy. and finally (here is the main spoiler)I found the film unbelievably crass. To recap: the film is about some kids who go off to find an animal that is attacking people/livestock. They find out that this animal is actually a human who has lived with dogs for years. This human is at times apparently superhuman, sometimes apparently not, for unexplained reasons. The final scene shows the lead character's 'real' motivation was that she had reinterpreted her own childhood sexual abuser (her father) as the demon-type monster in her dreams. I felt that this ending seemed tacked on to the film to give it gravitas, and that because the rest of the film is so light and frankly silly in places, it seemed completely inappropriate. At least films like Last House on the Left keeps a level tone to justify themselves. I watch some pretty hardcore horror, yet because of the sheer ineptness of execution, this is the one I consider to be in questionable taste. Films earn 'worth' through good execution - skillful storytelling and acting - not by having a serious issue stuck on the end up justify the stuff in the middle. I felt it actually made a mockery of the serious things it was trying (through flashbacks etc) to discuss.