Shame the Devil

The film starts out with the main gore and pulls you in with a familiar "Let's play a game..."-type unseen villain. The rest of the film proceeds more like a psychological thriller. The story does have some plot holes and moments that a lot of viewers will spot and not be able to get around. Also, some scenes seemed to have extraneous dialogue slowing the pace of film, which may have been trimmed in a more high-end production. Introduction/explanation of some characters may also come across a little sloppy unless you are really paying attention. Nice use of locations. Decent performances by actors. Of note, Juliette Bennett pulls off the requisite balance of smart and sexy in her role. While not exactly treading new territory in the genre, it probably has enough to keep a casual viewer interested.

Well – I was really disappointed by this film, and I didn't have that many expectations.

I am not sure where to start – seriously. From the outset it just didn't seem 'right' and progressively became more 'not right'.

From the outset the dialogue doesn't seem to fit together properly – let alone flow naturally as the story progresses. The same with character interactions – they just don't make sense at all. It is like the bits that explain the characters interaction is missing and they are straight into heavy emotional or dramatic dialogue for no obvious reason – very odd.

It could be partly the acting and partly the direction (as well as the awful writing) which doesn't make the characters believable at all. It is a bit like watching a very bad Latin American soap (if you have seen one you will know what I mean).

Then there are the factual inaccuracies. Whoever wrote this did not do their research well – if they did any at all that is. Some things are just plain ridiculous – like the lie detector machine and the 'psychological profiler' speaking absolute (bleep) about nearly everything to do with psychology.

There are so many unbelievable and plain stupid scenarios in this film that it is best to watch it for yourself – if you have nothing better to do such as laundry, or there isn't much interesting on the shopping channels.

The cinematography and lighting are OK though – mostly.

This could have potentially been a decent film if someone had taken time to write decent dialogue and made sure the story flowed naturally - and got their facts right – and the actors were better and not a mixture of wooden overly dramatic pensiveness.

The ending was rubbish too.

While the setup can keep an attention span engaged for the first half of the film, it is the latter half where the script rides off the rails with improbable plot devices like poisons, antidotes, and polygraph-triggered lock boxes. Like many fictional serial killers, the maniac of "Shame the Devil" has a diabolical plan so ludicrous that even the detective and the profiler cannot pinpoint if he is killing violators of the Ten Commandments, men with the first names of Jesus' apostles, or following some other whacked out methodology entirely. Looking back on it when all is revealed, you realize that it is the most ridiculously overcomplicated scheme ever devised to accomplish what the objective ultimately is.

If you claim to be even just a mild fan of the horror genre then you probably know about the 'Saw' films by now. From the opening scene in 'Shame the Devil' you'll probably be thinking, 'Oh, this is a Saw rip-off.' And you'd be right. Although, maybe Shame the Devil isn't anything like Saw at all, because the Saw franchise was well-done and successful whereas Shame the Devil is total rubbish.

Sorry to be blunt, but there isn't much going for this film. It's a British version of Saw, only nowhere near as good on any level.

Yes, it's a horror film and anyone who's ever watched one probably isn't expecting amazing performances from the characters. However, the actors here take bad acting to new levels. In fact, sometimes the performances are so bad that you could be excused for thinking that they're a bunch of students, playing at being professionals.

However, maybe I'm being a little unfair on the actors. They really don't get much to work with. Every line they're forced to speak is filled with clichés and sounds like it's been copied and pasted from one generic cop movie or another. With acting and dialogue like this it makes it impossible to care for any of the characters as they sort of bumble about, trying to catch a killer who's hell-bent on making his victims confess to their darkest secrets or murdering them if they lie.

Simple verdict: don't bother. There's absolutely nothing positive about this film at all (with the possible exception of the quite breath-taking establishing shots of London, which I found quite nice!).

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Poor script, weak and inexperienced acting, unforgivable direction skills....the list goes on....the cameraman managed to shoot it in focus but the weird inserts during a poor edit did little to save this awful production. I'm sure someone, somewhere would have gained from this dire movie...except of course us. How on earth did they manage to raise the three million dollars to make this? It uses techniques from other more successful films to give it a big budget feel a d fails at every level. Its a great pity that a British film made in 2013 avoided using experienced people, what a shocking waste of an opportunity to do something memorable.