A teenager wakes and finds her parents tied up, and a deranged assailant gives her 60 seconds to choose which one of them must die before forcing her to carry out the killing herself.
This pre-titles sequence leads to a story of a psycho nut, offering his victims impossible choices, tied up with a trainee reporter and her Chief of Police dad (and possibly also with her mother's suicide years earlier)
The reviews on IMDb all seem disappointed that this isn't Saw, or a variation of it. It is instead a psychological suspense thriller which develops steadily, without much in the way of action sequences, and with a relatively low gore quotient (but I said low, not non-existent). It is well photographed, well acted, relatively well-written, and a satisfying small scale thriller (satisfying unless you want it to be something it isn't). It keeps you guessing throughout and the explanation, as eventually revealed, does not cheat you.
The only thing seriously wrong with the film is the ending (as distinct from the resolution of the story), which is somewhat perfunctory and slightly unsatisfying, and followed by a wholly unnecessary and unconvincing "shock" addition.
But overall this is not a bad movie.
This pre-titles sequence leads to a story of a psycho nut, offering his victims impossible choices, tied up with a trainee reporter and her Chief of Police dad (and possibly also with her mother's suicide years earlier)
The reviews on IMDb all seem disappointed that this isn't Saw, or a variation of it. It is instead a psychological suspense thriller which develops steadily, without much in the way of action sequences, and with a relatively low gore quotient (but I said low, not non-existent). It is well photographed, well acted, relatively well-written, and a satisfying small scale thriller (satisfying unless you want it to be something it isn't). It keeps you guessing throughout and the explanation, as eventually revealed, does not cheat you.
The only thing seriously wrong with the film is the ending (as distinct from the resolution of the story), which is somewhat perfunctory and slightly unsatisfying, and followed by a wholly unnecessary and unconvincing "shock" addition.
But overall this is not a bad movie.