An empty, vacuous waste of time and money

Rating: 1/10 (25 February 2005)

This film is host to some of the most contemptible 'acting' ever captured on celluloid, especially that of Cary Elwes, who offers a performance so staggeringly awful that every scene with him in (most of them, unfortunately) is a potential side-splitter. The sheer awesomeness of his inability to plausibly affect emotion is astounding; they might as well have cast Tom Green in the central role. Mind you, Elwes isn't helped by some of the most unbelievable and quite frankly atrocious dialogue I've ever come across in a movie. OK, so it's a horror film, I didn't expect Shakespeare, but I did expect some at least vaguely convincing character exchanges. Even the ever-dependable Danny Glover struggles with dire-logue this ludicrous. All of which makes me wonder bewilderingly how this film received such critical praise. To quote but one example, The Guardian newspaper in its review stated: "perhaps you enjoyed 'Seven'. This goes up to 'Eight'." How the film review section of such a prestigious newspaper could even compare the magnificent 'Seven' to this vile entity is beyond my grasp. If you watch horror films merely for guts and gore and don't really care for characterisation, halfway decent scripting and actors who can actually act, 'Saw' is the film for you. However, if you enjoy intelligent, well-acted, brilliantly-scripted psychological think-pieces then you're much better off with 'Seven.'