Tormented

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Justine Fielding (Tuppence Middleton) being escorted out of school by the police, as other pupils look on. It then has a flashback to 5 days earlier, where Justine is reading at the funeral of Darren Mullett (Calvin Dean). She starts to talk about him, when Jason Banks (Olly Alexander) stands up in church and calls her a hypocrite because she didn't really know him. He is then thrown out of church by the sadistic PE teacher.Later on, Justine is talking to her friend Helena (Mary Nighy) about staying in and watching a Keira Knightley DVD, Atonement, when Alexis (Dimitri Leonidas) decides to invite her to a party his friends Bradley (Alex Pettyfer), Tasha (April Pearson), Kally (Larissa Wilson), Sophie (Georgia King), and Marcus (Tom Hopper) are having. She decides to go to the party, rather than staying in with Helena.At the party, Justine arrives and Tasha tells Jez, the DJ to say something about her appearance. He begins to rap about her, when Alexis tells him to stop, and he is thrown out of the party by Bradley. Later, Alexis and Justine go somewhere quiet, and he tells her they are on a date, at which point they kiss. Bradley, Tasha, Kally, Marcus and Sophie all receive horrible text messages from Mullett's number. During this, someone puts on a clown costume and grabs a chainsaw, before heading up to the room where they are kissing. The figure is revealed to be Bradley, who is playing a prank on them.Jez goes to the cemetery to celebrate Mullett's death, and urinates on his grave, and is killed by an unseen figure, who stabs him with a cross. Later, the group have a toast to Mullett's life, and Justine reveals that she can't even remember who he is.The next day, they arrive at school, and the headmaster gets a call saying that Jez never came home the night before. Bradley threatens another pupil about removing a website he had put up about him. Justine is persuaded to hang around with the cool gang, and tells Helena that she won't be able to make it to her Keira Knightley DVD evening. She finds a teddy bear (stolen from Mullett's grave) in her locker and assumes it is from Alexis. He asks her on another date after this, which she agrees to. She goes to see Jason and he tells her that Mullett was in love with her, and hands her his suicide note. While she is reading the note, a teacher tells her that she will make a great pupil at Oxford university.The pupil threatened by Bradley is then attacked, and sees Mullett's ghost, but is listening to music through headphones, and the loud music sends him deaf.Over the course of the day, the gang get more messages, and Bradley believes Jason is sending them. Jason, meanwhile is in art class, and the teacher tells everyone that the guillotine is faulty and they shouldn't touch it. A boy sent by Bradley fetches him out of class, and then Bradley and Marcus chase him into the gym, where they give him a wedgie, but are interrupted by another message, meaning Jason cannot have sent it. The sadistic PE teacher then arrives and gives Jason detention. The girls decide that Helena has been sending the messages and attack her. Sophie tells Justine that she should sleep with Alexis that night, and goes back into the swimming pool, where she is attacked by Mullett's ghost and drowns.Later that night, Justine and Alexis sleep together, but are seen by Mullett, who tears the badge from her uniform, and re-arranges her fridge magnets, calling her a slut. She returns to school and shows Alexis the suicide note, but his friends tell her she cannot hand it into the police, because she would implicate herself in his death.Marcus is then in PE class, where he sees Mullett's ghost, and the teacher tells him to go and have a shower, just as the art teacher arrives and tells the head that they have found Sophie's body. In the shower, he is whipped with a towel by the ghost of Mullett. He manages to fight him off and heads outside, running into Helena, who accuses him of trying to rape her because he is semi naked. He manages to get outside, and is impaled upon a fence by the ghost.Later on, the gang are at Bradley's house, and they have an argument, where Tasha and Justine get into a fight, and Justine is thrown into the swimming pool. Bradley decides to go and dig Mullett's body up at the cemetery.Justine goes home, and demands that Alexis shows her the site, where it is revealed that he is one of the bullies, and that she was rude to Mullett because he interrupted a conversation about her going to Oxford. She tells Alexis that he is deceitful and a liar, and that their relationship is over.While Bradley is at the cemetery, Tasha gets drunk in his car, and invites him to have sex with her. During the act, Mullett appears and pulls him out of the car, and kills him. Tasha runs away, but falls into an open grave, where she lies to Mullett that she fancied him, causing him to decapitate her with a shovel.The next day, Justine arrives at the art class, where Jason painted Munch's "The Scream" painting, and tells him that she was responsible for Mullett's death. He tells her that it has been his fault, because he was scared of being bullied, so he told Bradley that Mullett fancied her. She leaves the room, and Mullett appears, and kills him by jamming two pencils up his nose and slamming his head against the table.Justine approaches Helena and tells her that she is sorry, that her friends, including Alexis were all horrible. Kally runs over and asks her where Tasha is, but Justine tells her she doesn't care. Kally then gets a text message from Tasha telling her to meet her in the art room.Before Justine can follow, she is confronted by Alexis, who tells her he is going to kill Mullett for what he has done to everyone. Justine tells him that Kally is in danger. Kally gets to the art room, and sees "The Scream" with her name on it, at which point Mullett puts a bag over her head, before using the guillotine to slice her hands off. She tries to call the headteacher, but he is too busy with the police, who tell him that Justine's badge has been found near the bodies of Bradley and Tasha.They get to the art room, and find Jason's and Kally's bodies, and are attacked by Mullett. They break free, by stabbing him in the stomach with a screwdriver and head to the common room, where Mullett follows them. Alexis tries to stop him, but is stabbed in the hand with the screwdriver. Justine gets him to stop, but he begins to choke her to death. She grabs his inhaler and throws it across the room, telling Alexis to smash it. He does, and the ghost begins to die.Justine tells Alexis to leave, but he punches Mullett, knocking a sofa over, and finding Mullett's other inhaler, which Mullett then uses. Mullett then stabs Alexis in the throat with the screwdriver. As Justine cradles his body, she looks up at Mullett, disgusted and says "You know what, they were right, you do look like fucking Shrek!", just as the police arrive. Justine is then led out and into the police car seen earlier, having been arrested for the murders. She sees Mullett's ghost but then it disappears.During the credits, there is a sequence where the PE teacher is telling students off, and Mullett is shown getting ready for revenge on him.

Tags: horror, revenge, comedy, violence, stupid

Review:
The head girl Justine (Tuppence Middleton) gives a speech on the funeral of the teenage schoolmate Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean) that has just committed suicide but she does not recall who he was.
Music is by Paul Hartnoll and cinematography by Trevor Forrest.A bullied teenager at Fairview High School takes his own life but appears to have come back from the dead to take revenge on his classmates.Gruesome, fun and flavoured by pinches of satire, Tormented is a far better film than the internet ratings suggest.
An entirely predictable high school horror in which a bullied student commits suicide and then comes back from the dead as a malevolent zombie, taking revenge on everyone who wronged him.
The bit involving a guillotine is particularly outrageous and really works, and it's moments like this that stop TORMENTED from being a dog in the same way that non-starting hoodie horror F was a dog.
The plot is rather unrealistic but thats what makes it fun, anything could happen, and most things do.I would recommend this to someone who isn't too bothered about what they are watching, who is up for a good laugh, but doesn't mind a bit of blood and guts..
Try having pencils shoved through your nose into your cranium, or perhaps something more traditional like a screwdriver through the throat; now, that's tough.Like all brilliantly devised horror stories however, we must start at the beginning—the humble innocence of a time when ghosts and bloody murder seemed neighbourhoods away in some dingy alleyway somewhere, or perhaps confined to DVD collections of your average ditsy teenage girl.
On the one hand you have this ridiculous plot which never seems to take itself too seriously, which makes for some entertaining watching at the very least—but then on the other you have this very fine cast ensemble who lend the movie a sense of Skins-esquire realism that distinctly puts the otherwise campy and self-depreciating narrative on a bit of a backburner, despite the fact that most play broadly written caricatures.
The resulting feature is fragmented and somewhat perplexing; not quite dissimilar from your average teenager then, I guess.Tormented can be genuinely funny, a little spooky, and even somewhat moving in a couple of scenes, but too often it's the case that the viewer will be left laughing at the movie rather than with it (a primary example being one of the best ads for safe-sex I've seen in a while).
Horror buffs will probably enjoy all the farcical horror shenanigans a lot more than your average cinephile of course, because despite the fact that Tormented really isn't a great movie per se, it's at least got all the staples and defining traits of your average back row snog-fest to fill up the awkward silences with guffaws of "Oh my God, look at that guys chest bleed!
My friend and I really wanted to see this film but sadly it wasn't showing at our local cinema so we got a train to Milton Keynes just to see it and I have to say it didn't disappoint, I was having second thoughts about this film when we were on our way because the TV adverts for this film makes it look like a boring teenage slasher, it is a teenage slasher but not boring.
This is the sort of thing you got in the mid 80's towards the end of the first slasher movie trend, and to be honest they did it better (although still not good).The script was generally fairly appalling with little or no original thought gone into it.The acting ranged from bad to average.
The camera focused on all the wrong things at all the wrong times totally destroying any attempt at tension that could feasibly have been wrought out of a scene.The whole thing from script, acting and directing looked and played out like it was a 14 year old drama students first attempt at making a film with all his/her mates playing the roles.
Direction and acting were okay, and quite stylish at points, but the storyline itself wasn't sufficient to tread a path between horror and comedy.The bullying is over-the-top and unbelievable, certainly for the age of people involved; characters were kept paper-thin; and the script riddled with clichés.
I have just watched Tormented this evening and I found this film not to be very good at all, and i was quite disappointed with it It is about a boy called Darren Mullett (Calvin Dean), who killed himself through being bullied by pupils at his school.
All in all it's a pretty well made comedic slasher film.As the film opens a bullied fat asthma stricken outcast named Darren Mullet (played by Calvin Dean) has just committed suicide.
The death scenes are creative and at times humorous though and as far as low budget slasher films go this one is pretty well put together.
Tormented is actually an anti-bullying film, that features an obese teenager, that has committed suicide after years of abuse.
Magic Mike's Alex Pettyfer stars as the bully and much like the rest of the cast, is far too old to be playing a high school student.
Films like this are low budget, and I understand they need a person of name in order to be recognized, but I've always felt that they should cast real teenagers, and give them a chance at breaking into the business, rather than have the roles played by actors that are pushing thirty!
A bullied teenager at Fairview High School takes his own life but appears to have come back from the dead to take revenge on his classmates.I personally did not enjoy this film, the characters felt underdeveloped and unlikable and the plot was poorly written and predictable.
A group of bullying teenagers are targeted individually by a student who committed suicide.Before pointing out that reviewers and critics have established this as "Skins with killings", it is worth mentioning that the E4 programme is a drama, containing controversial yet equally fun and poignant entertainment for teenagers and adults.
With the movie being made under £1 million i found it was applaudable for a film on that budget, Alex Pettyfer seemed, i thought, strangely fitted to his character, and the character of Tasha played by SKins' 'Michelle' was i thought creditable, i feel that this film may do quite well in England as it is a bit of 'British Comedy'.
The bullies, the leader, Bradley (Alex Pettyfer), his girlfriend, Tasha (April Pearson), the muscle, Marcus (Tom Hopper) and bitchy girls Sophie (Georgia King) and Khalilah (Larissa Wilson) run the school with a reign of terror; but there start to receive text messages from Darren from beyond the grave.
But Justine starts to feel guilty when Darren's friend Jason (Olly Alexander) claims she is just as guilty because she ignored him.The film's writer Stephen Prentice and director Jon Wright (not to be confused with Joe Wright), have obviously never met a teenager or set floor in a school.
He doesn't look terrifying or even frightening just kind of annoying.I mean, who comes back from the dead with evil powers and starts off their haunting career by sending scary text messages?Also this movie was praised by people for "really showing how bad bullying is" but no "bully" would ever, ever, EVER take a kids inhaler during an asthma attack and hide it.The size of it is this movie isn't good enough to be remembered or even bad enough too be remembered it's just kinda there..
Were the movie successful in setting up a nonsensical witty feel to the ongoings, this wouldn't have been a real problem.In the end "Tormenter" fails to hit all the right points: It doesn't involve when necessary, doesn't make you laugh when intended, doesn't scare at all, doesn't build up drama as promised.
There are stupid dialogs and only uncharismatic protagonists which make it very difficult to keep track of the movie.The murderer is seen very rarely at the beginning and kills to the end very fast with a lot of gore effects which will explain the movie rating.The storyline that a victim of bullying attacks will put his revenge onto his enemies seems interesting but is has been far better realized in e.g.
Making a decent slasher film does not come easy because a lot of effort is required and precisely on the details,first of all the plot must be simple and then you start of by putting in sufficient gore,choosing an appropriate location and all the scary stuff.Unfortunately the movie Tormented'fails to accomplish this little approach,okay the story here is simple but the rest of the stuff is just not enough,its not scary at all...some mean teenagers being chased by their zombie peer is something that can be made pretty damn thrilling,in my opinion this film would have been better if they had used a psychotic serial killer instead of a dumb zombie kid,well you can easily let this one pass on,its basically a weak attempt for a slasher movie and there is no way that i recommend this one to anybody....let it slide away this time,find some other worthy of your time....
Imagine my surprise when i became absorbed in a surprisingly funny, stylish and well-acted horror.plot: The film begins at the funeral of Darren Mullet(Calvin Dean), a bullied boy who hanged himself.
As Alexis takes a shine to the pretty Justine the group begins receiving texts from the not-so-dead Darren Mullet who is hell bent on taking brutal revenge on his "tormentors".Story/relationshipsWhilst the plot sounds like your everyday slasher full of attractive bitches getting just what they deserve its actually a bit more than that.
Written by Stephen Prentice and directed by Jon Wright, Tormented is the classic teen slash horror film about bullying, and the effects bullying can have on different types of people.
The film starred many familiar British faces such as April Pearson and Larissa Wilson from 'Skins', and Alex Pettyfer and Georgia King from 'Wildchid' However even though I knew these actors, the writing and development of these characters was quite outrageous.
This Horror Comedy courtesy of the BBC, stars Alex Pettyfer (Beastly) & the beautiful Tuppence Middleton as the head elites of a school bullying clique that begin getting taken out in various methods by a vengeful ghost.
But the ending has a great twist & the "victim ghost" gets retribution full circle it's purely epic.This film is definitely for the "Skins" generation, due to a lot of younger British slang is used throughout but I definitely can say this film is right up there with other UK horror comedies..
Too bad the film is heartless.***** Tormented (5/22/09) Jon Wright ~ Tuppence Middleton, Dimitri Leonidas, Calvin Dean, Alex Pettyfer.
Tormented is your 'run of the mill' horror film, besides the creative deaths it is generally what you've seen before, some parts are very cliché and I found that I could just guess what was going to happen next and I would be correct.
The school scenes tend to be comedy like, the girls have their skirts pulled up as high as possible and are wearing heels instead of appropriate shoes, this pulls from the films a bit because it's meant to be scary yet this feels more like a teen boys dream at some points.
Overall this film serves as more of a way to pass the time and it borders on boring towards the end, the dead schoolboy, called Darren Mullet, isn't really scary looking either and I think that this takes a lot away from the film, the start of the film basically tells the ending of the film and this was apparent about 30 minutes in.
A little comedy~horror gem~All very silly but very entertaining and the type of horror that would appeal to a wider audience than the standard slasher horror flick~ Interesting story with witty dialogue and pretty solid acting~Some very novel and amusing deaths indeed and you are never sure when and how they will occur~I enjoyed all of the characters that the writers had created and thought the actors were ideally cast~7 or 8 ~ 7 or 8 hmmm lets go for 8 to match the review number if nothing else~.
Justine is in over her head as the pack of hyenas she now associates herself with(in this case the bitches)Sophie(, Khalilla(Larissa Wilson), and Natascha(April Pearson), for they eventually run her life.A series of text messages are sent to the repulsive bullies warning of their deaths to come from Darren Mullet's cell phone(their nickname for him was "Shrek").
(MINOR spoilers) This film was made locally (I know people who work at the school in which it's set, and my niece was married in the church where they hold the funeral) so I thought if I didn't support it, nobody would - low budget indie comedy horror is a bit of an acquired taste.I went in knowing only that it was about a teenager who came back from the dead to get his own back on the bullies who'd made his life hell, and that it was a "comedy-horror".I could make a very long list of where this film failed to impress, but I can summarise them in three words: plot, characters and dialogue.The plot holes are big enough to drive a cart and horses through.
"Tormented" is a darkly funny, gory, fun and proudly British horror movie which, in some ways a first for the prolific genre, boldly focuses on the grange hill/skins/twitter audience and introduces the now relevant cyber-bullying craze which is extremely apparent in secondary schools across the UK.
There's loads to like here; the hilarious emo's staring apathetically in admiration over the tragic death of Mullet-competing over who lives the most ignored lifethe film club geeks who await the participation of the perfect head girl Justine, whilst adoring the difference between commentary on the Atonement DVD and without itand the outrageously ignorant staff who darkly overlook the blood shed and bullying around them (one teacher tries to-this made me laugh out loud-explain to a cotton candy sweet teacher that the dead girl lifelessly floating in the schools pool is simply "swimming"!).
In the film Tormented, one of the best acting performances was Alex Pettyfer who plays Bradley He was a stereotypical bully who caused Darren Mullet to commit suicide.
The film embraces the black comedy/ horror genre; a good old British slasher flick with a sneaky underlying anti-bulling message.
Poking fun at the cliques and clichés of high school with emo puns and believable characters, Tormented is a film that has a little bit of everything; horror, comedy, romance and a serious message beneath all the far-fetched shenanigans.
Even after the deaths of Sophie in the pool and Marcus getting his head put through a spike the school stays open which is very strange to me.Overall I think the film was certainly not rubbish but I wouldn't say I liked it enough to want to go out and buy it on DVD or go out of my to see it when it on television or on my computer.
The film also is very spooky as certain deaths are very unrealistic and unpredictable but in general the film has been fairly successful as actors Alex Pettyfer (storm breaker) and April Pearson (skins) have had later success in "Magic Mike" and "Casualty".On the other hand the film has a lot of critical points such as this likely to encourage bullying as David Mullet comes more as a villain then as a Victim.
This film is obviously influenced by "Friday the 13th" because Darren Mullet comes back from the dead to get his revenge on the students who "Tormented" him.
I must admit i am not a person who enjoys a horror movie and one of the key factors that led me to going to see Tormented was the cast, in particular one Alex Pettyfer, but i can say how surprised, in a good way, as to how much i enjoyed the film.
In what I can only describe as arrogance, the film tries to hint at the situation being similar to Macbeth, Although of course they do all bear a certain guilt, there is no possibility of Darren Muller's Ghost/Zombie being a figment of their imagination making the reference feel irrelevant.The moment that really made me regret seeing this film however was the scene with the inhaler, for some reason it acted as a sort of Phylactery that would defeat the ghost when destroyed, however Justine figures this out the very moment we come to see it for the first time and it made it feel like a last minute addition by the writer, on top of that it doesn't even resolve anything anyway.To summarise, The Plot was beyond 'having holes', the acting wasn't amazing but not really an issue either, The gore was okay but the film tried being comedy when it should have been horror and vice versa the funny moments that people laughed weren't really purposeful jokes but poor attempts at horror that were just laughable..
An average film and had a good non-linear narrative about a boy committing suicide and then coming back to kill the teens that bullied him.
I am currently watching Tormented as part of my AS Media Studies work, and I have to say I was looking forward to watching this Original British Horror Movie, based around a school kid called Darren Mullet, who commits suicide as he was so badly 'Tormented' by your typical school bully and his gang.
A school kid was bullied, and commits suicide, then comes back to haunt and kill the pupils is very basic; a more advanced storyline could have been used to make the film interesting and a "must watch." Overall, for a low budget horror attempt, it is very good, the way that young people are included in such classic attempts at a horror sequence are amazing.