Onus

Written (partly) directed, produced and filmed by George Clark this is a film that has a great idea but not much else. The synopsis is that a young lad Kieran (played by Anthony Boyle – who also wrote this – spot a pattern yet?) and some other man awaken to find they are chained together with some handguns gaffer taped to their other hand. They have a note saying that they each have one bullet and one of them must die. So far so good.

Move on to chapter 2 and the plot thickens and the interest sort of spikes at this point. Then we get some issues that might be down to budget or other limitations but it just goes downhill from here. To say too much runs the risk of a plot spoil.

Now the acting is OK to actually quite god in places. Boyle is very convincing and Robert Render as the teacher is really good. However there are some plot holes; like is there anyone who does not know how to undo gaffer tape? That aside we also have some not very good cinematography with some shots trying to be arty and instead just look childishly contrived. Then the sound issues – I can forgive the set noise that occurs a few times but the insertion of fake animal noises is irksome at best. The dogs that never materialise and the bird noises at the end gave me a migraine and all they did was try to inject a false sense of foreboding but really made you want to reach for the off button and then the paracetmol. So only think about this if you have very few options indeed.