Needle (2010)

Directed by: John V. Soto | 89 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Jane Badler, Ben Mendelsohn, Travis Fimmel, Tahyna Tozzi, Michael Dorman, John Jarratt, Jessica Marais, Nathaniel Buzolic, Murray Bartlett, Trilby Glover, Khan Chittenden, Chanel Marriott, Malcolm Kennard, Luke Carroll, Jade Chamberlain, Michael Loney, James Hagan, Daniela Knopf, Quintin George

Sometimes a single gimmick is enough to keep a clichéd dime-a-dozen movie entertaining and interesting. If the murder film ‘Needle’ had simply focused on a killer with a kitchen knife instead of an ingenious voodoo box with which the victims meet their end in an original way, it would have been a film to collect dust in the video store. But because of this funny addition to a film in a well-known subgenre, ‘Needle’ has become a film to remember.

The voodoo box is an invention of the filmmakers and works fine in the context of a horror film. The nice thing is that it pairs a real villain with a supernatural, elusive enemy. It produces a kind of combination between ‘Final Destination’ and a film like ‘Scream’, in which a group of school friends is severely depleted by a killer with issues, but it is never clear how the victims will end. In one case, a murder is preceded by failing stadium lights. Sometimes the victims are ripped open from the inside or something bad happens to a limb, but it’s always a surprise. The only thing the murders have in common is the sound of spinning gears that the victims hear loud and clear before they come to their end.

It’s a shame director John V. Soto couldn’t have put a little more creative impulse into this fairly generic high school murder film, or in a few cases put on stronger characters or actors, because then ‘Needle’ could really have been an above-average genre film. . The grim, dingy voodoo vibe could have been exploited even more, for instance. Also, more could have been made of the Grand Guignol phenomenon (the Grand Guignol was a theater in Paris around the beginning of the twentieth century, where realistic-looking horror shows were staged) and the fascination of humans for blood and horror (which of course would be another nice reference to the movie ‘Needle’ and horror movies in general). But it is already a bonus that these elements are present in the film at all.

Soto himself is probably a big fan of blood and gore in films (and other art forms), given the mutilations in his own film, the reference to Gran Guignol and the nod to the grandmaster of the giallo films, Dario Argento (an interested person for the box is a member of the “Argento community”). The film is nice and bloody, but the film remains reasonably within the limits of the “tasty”. This is not “torture horror” along the lines of the ‘Saw’ or ‘Hostel’ series. Above all, it remains a (high school) murder mystery and does its job well in that respect. It is a pity that the viewer learns little about the person of the killer during the film, but this leaves people guessing about his or her identity for a long time. The motives of the perpetrator can be guessed fairly quickly, but it is still a fun game to connect the right person to this.

The characters are sometimes a bit drowsy (main character Ben [Michael Dorman] for example) or slightly annoying (his brother, played by Travis Fimmel) but on the whole ‘Needle’ looks nice. Containing the usual high school scenes and stereotypes (a nerd looking for a woman; a confident, athletic hunk; showy kissing lesbians; an impossibly attractive young lady who craves the protagonist’s attention), has suspense at the right time, and was shot skillfully. With a little more credibility in some scenes and characters and a more inspired form, this could have been a sleeper hit. Now it’s just an entertaining high school horror with a twist.