Beneath

when I saw the 'MTV Films' logo pop up at the beginning of the movie. This production company are well known for making teen-focused trash like the JACKASS movies, but BENEATH seems to be their sole foray (so far) into horror movie territory. Let's hope they don't make any more attempts in the future!

This is an utterly predictable, completely routine and altogether dull movie. It looks and feels familiar from the outset: a maladjusted but pretty young heroine, who often suffers nightmares and hallucinations, returning to her small town and discovering some dark secrets amongst the townsfolk. Such films have propped up the Hollywood film industry since the 1970s and BENEATH proves to be a familiar and depressingly poor addiction to that genre. Despite the prevalence of plot twists in the narrative, everything that happens is easily guessed and the wannabe-shock ending is worth nothing more than a yawn and raised eyebrow.

In some places the story seems to have been inspired by JANE EYRE but classy this isn't. Instead it's a film filled with clichés, from the good-looking deputy sheriff type character to the wide-eyed heroine stumbling around in the dark. Nora Zehetner (BRICK) makes a game effort as the heroine but she can't do much with the all-too-familiar material. The worst part of the film is the flashy direction, which is so clichéd as to be unbelievable: all sudden jump cuts during the so-called 'scare sequences', flashes of people writhing in beds and the like. The most unpalatable part of the film is the twist ending, which left me with a bad taste in the mouth. It just tops off an altogether uninteresting movie.