Chain Letter

This one's for Jessica B: A nice little horror film that begins with an "oh shit" moment and takes off from there. A group of high schoolers get an annoying chain letter email and are informed if they don't send it to 5 more people they will die within 24 hours. Starring Nikki Reed (my second movie of the night with her but a much better performance) as Jessie Campbell, and among others Keith David as detective Jim Crenshaw, Betsy Russell (!) as sergeant Hamill and Brad Dourif as Mr. Smirker, one of the teachers at the school. How'd you like to have Mr. Dourif as one of your teachers, huh? The man exudes creepiness in all of his roles and that's why he's always so fun to watch as he is in this film as well. Yeah I know all the high schoolers look like they're too old to go to high school but has that ever stopped us from liking a horror film? Um...no! Eventually more and more people are dying and it's up to Crenshaw to figure out who's doing it and why. With only some chain links with a unique symbol on them at the murder scenes for clues, he will have to work quickly to figure out the killer. Part of this movie reminded me of the Final Destination series a little bit while at other times it was a lot like the horror movies of 4-5 years ago (Cry Wolf, Stay Alive which got a lot of their foundation of stories more or less from the late 90's horror renaissance: Scream (1996), The Faculty (1998), I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), Urban Legend (1998)), so if you're interested in seeing a somewhat solid horror thriller with snappy pacing, some good kill scenes with an interesting mode of death (chains) try this on for size. Recommended.

F