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Horror films dealing with "compulsory suicide" as a theme are automatically unsettling and scary. They're also quite rare, since they must deal with the issue of how to give a proper and reasonably plausible explanation to the strange phenomenon of the compulsory suicides. Larry Cohen's "God Told Me To" is a fine example, and to a lesser extent also the more recent "Truth or Dare", but the modest sleeper-hit "From Within" might be the best one yet. Here the suicides are linked to extremely religious fanaticism and a curse evoked by a family of heathens.

Bible freaks are frightening as well, especially when they are young folks like the characters played here by Kelly Blatz and Adam Goldberg. "From Within" is probably the only film ever in which the fancy religious nerd beats up the handsome rebel kid in the schoolyard! The suicide sequences are disturbing because the victims are (mostly) innocent and often still very young, and personally I always get the creeps from self-declared prophets spreading the - supposed - Word of God. The film, set in a secluded little town, also looks stunningly beautiful and stylish, which is no doubt due to the director - Phedon Papamichael - being an Oscar-winning cinematographer. The performances are good, the soundtrack is suiting, and the climax is - hands down - one of the best and most shocking climaxes of all horror movies made after the year 2000.

A small town is plagued by an outbreak of apparent suicides. As the death toll rises, in increasingly grisly fashion, it becomes clear that something other than simple self-annihilation could be going on.

FROM WITHIN is a supernatural tale of past sins and retribution. It plays like a really good X-FILES episode. The idea of a curse that acts like a contagion has been done before (in RINGU, THE RING, etc.), but it remains an intriguing concept.

While the characters are all serviceable, and casting Adam Goldberg against type as a volatile redneck is a nice touch, it's the overall creepiness that makes this fear fable work...

After the witness of a suicide starts off a chain of similar cursed deaths in town, a young woman tries to keep her hyper-religious boyfriend from going after the supposed start of the curse long enough to stop it before more deaths occur.

This here was a rather troubling and pretty flawed effort at times, though it does have a couple pretty interesting parts. The film is on when it's dealing with the curse and the graphic deaths that result, and beyond just the surface shocks and entertainment these are surprisingly deeper than expected. Spread throughout by the appearance of ghostly doppelgangers that mark the deaths as suicides, there's much more to this aspect of the film beyond the inherently creepy and thrilling scenes they are just on-the-surface, and altogether these provide the film with a lot of good marks. Unfortunately, there's still a lot wrong here and it's all centered around the backwoods inhabitants and the heavy presence of religion in their lives. Far too often this denigrates into a religious rant that never explains anything other than their backwards and irrational thinking damaging whatever this could've done with the material, and by unleashing a twist late in the film that makes for the whole affair mirroring a similar fate doled out years earlier for the same reason makes this whole part challenging and really tough to get by, making it so severe at times that it drags the rest of the film down considerably. It's still watchable, but not as it could've been.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

I often come across people who prefer horror films that happen to have a good story. I, on the other hand, prefer films with a good story that just so happen to be scary. "From Within" is one of the latter. After having watched it, I'm surprised I had never heard of it before. It has a sense of overall quality unique to its class (relatively unknown, made for a Horrorfest).

The story is the movie's strongest point, with a plot that throws in appropriate twists without wavering from its core. From beginning to end, it is emotionally engaging and suspenseful. The character development exceeded my expectations as well, along with the performances from the cast. There is violence, but the film never drowns itself in gore. Most of the actual deaths happen just off-screen, giving you just enough build-up to use your imagination.

Supernatural horror/thrillers are a dime a dozen, and many of them fall short of expectations. "From Within" stands out among the crowd— proving that given a well-executed plot and the right casting, films of this genre can be as powerful as ever.

Although this type of film has been done many times before there is always room for good writing, acting, camera work and directing. Hey, if one is going to enjoy a modest budget horror flick one must get past the fact the takes-place-in-a-town-with-weird-residents plus the supernatural-aspects-to-be-taken-for-granted are simply ingrained in the process. This setting and genre must either be accepted and enjoyed or ignored altogether.

That said, the acting is FROM WITHIN is exceptional. The teens (and they actually look like teenagers instead of dressed up 30-year-olds) are neither sullen nor over the top but anxious, indecisive, vulnerable; i.e., like real teenagers. Miss Rice in particular delivers her lines in convincing fashion. The two young male leads could easily slide into stereotypes but...well...don't. The adults, e.g., the sheriff and the preacher, aren't overbearing elders. All the adults, in fact, actually interact with the teens, whereas in many movies like this one there is the teen world (Read: real and emotional) and the adult world (Read: static and authoritative).

The supernatural aspect, while never believable, is thankfully modest in inception and use. If the final scenes are not edge-of-your-seat they hold your interest as to what's going to happen. Cool "twist" at the very end too. What's a 56-year-old movie snob watching something like this for? Hey, I'm entitled to some fun too. Most things like this are lucky to last 20 minutes on my screen. FROM WITHIN went the full micro-wave popcorn ninety minutes.