20131030: Horror Review--Spiderhole

Spiderhole

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Irish live action feature length film, 2010, NR, 81 minutes, horror.  Aspect 2.35
2. IMDB: 4.0/10.0 from 581 user ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 25% on the tomato meter, but 'no consensus yet.'  20% liked it from 1,387 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 76,002 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Daniel Simpson.
6. Starring: Amy Noble as Zoe, Emma Griffiths Malin as Molly, George Maguire as Toby, John Regan as The Captor, Ruben Henry Biggs as Luke.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Four homeless art students squat in a supposedly abandoned London house.


2. Things go well for a while.  The windows and doors look covered with old boards, which should be no problem to break into.  The place has been abandoned for a number of years, and not everything works right at first.  They discover some old clothes with fresh blood on them.  That does not seem to set off their sense of danger.


3. The next morning, joy turns to despair quickly enough.  The windows covered with boards had solid metal beneath the boards; the back door was the same.  The front door, which Toby so carefully broke into and re-engineered the previous night, has been bolted down with solid metal.  Toby's tool box has gone missing, as has every cell phone they had.  They try to get the attention of the police outside who are looking over there 'borrowed' van.  Hm.  The cops cannot hear them.


4. The captor gasses them, then takes Toby away.  The rest look for him, but have little success at first.  Their captor ties up Zoe as well, then the torture segment starts.


5. Luke and Molly think they have the drop on their captor.  They end up killing Toby instead.  Then the captor gasses them.  He saws off Zoe's lower legs, then turns his attention to Luke and Molly.


6. Molly manages to get free, and strikes her captor with an iron rod, but only once.  She leaves that to chance.  Molly finds what is left of Luke, then tries to find an exit, now that she has a set of keys.  She also finds the captor's back-story which tells partially why he keeps repeating all the torture.


7. Does Molly make it out alive?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Stoner squatter thieves search for and find their own damnation.
2. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10  Love the 2.35 aspect ratio. This picture starts out beautifully on the visuals, and continues that way.


2. Sound: 10/10 Creepy, good tracks, well chosen and recorded.


3. Acting: 5/10 Could have been a lot better.


4. Screenplay: 8/10 Tells a story, and does it fairly well.