Flawed but Fun Blumhouse offering

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2015)

I expected this film to be alright - not great, but not rubbish either.
And guess what, dear readers? For once I was dead on!
It's an interesting concept behind the film - legalising practically all criminal activity for one night, providing a release valve for the population with the result that the crime rate for the rest of the year is practically nil.
I was always a fan of Ethan Hawke, and I'm pleased to see that his acting career is having a bit of a resurgence. He and Lena Headey (a superb actress who manages to bring a real humanity to every character she plays) work really well together. Unfortunately, the main villain of the film (played by Rhys Wakefield) tries way too hard to channel the ghost of Heath Ledger in his creepily polite and occasionally eruptive psychopath role, and I feel like I'm watching the guy who came top in his class in GCSE drama but didn't feel the need to get any better.
One of the criticisms levelled at this film is that the writers have been rather superficial in dealing with the socio-economic problems brought up by the concept (some people can afford to defend themselves better than others, for example), but then if they had spent more time on that it would have been a totally different film. This is, after all, a silly horror/action/sci-fi flick.
Blumhouse have developed a reputation for producing films that are sometimes excellent, sometimes OK, but always worth a look. This is a pretty good one, and it's definitely worth a look. I think if we'd seen this marketed as a thriller rather than a horror, it would have gone down better
Verdict: flawed but fun!
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