[Dead Box]
Plot:Taking place in real time and filmed in one continuous shot. DEADBOX is a riveting and groundbreaking cinematic experience. A five-person team of paintball players decide to go environmental on their way to a tournament. Unfortunately, the environment they choose turns out to be an abandoned prison, whose sole inhabitant is a paranoid schizophrenic veteran who mistakes them for a team of assassins. Now the game is for real.

Cast:David Alford, Jason Lewis, Keir O'Donnell.

My Thoughts:Good low budget genre fare.

Review:"Dead Box" is another entry into the indie slasher market. Indie slashers haven't done a lot different when it comes to the overall mechanics and blueprint of slasher films in general. There's either too much predictability, too little blood, lame twists, un-elaborate and uncreative kills, and then of course, there's the poor acting. Sometimes, the plots are way too contrived for the films budget, players, and settings, and while ambition is much appreciated, sometimes too much ambition without the key elements to back it up, can be disasterous. Robert Lynn's "Dead Box" is none of those things.

It's a low-budgeteer for sure. But the way it's filmed, the type of camera it is filmed on, and the overall scenario, make it a very good indie-slasher experience. The film, which is said to be based on true events, follows a group of paintballers who find an abandoned prison in a remote part of California, and decide to use it as a practice range. Things go sideways fast though, when they are attacked by a schizo-war-vet who sees them as invaders, and plans to take them out one by one.

The killer in this film is an interesting specimen, and really drives the movie more than anyone else. He's not a psychobilly, nor a sick, sadistic rapist/murderer, nor is he some suburban white guy who's tired of teens who smoke dope and have sex, and plans to cleanse them. He's really a guy who has lost his mind, and is truly a threat to anyone he comes into contact with. The actor who plays him plays him with much depth and range, and the demented, dirty, rusted - and grizzled look of the killer adds a lot of reality and grit to the equation.

The fact that this was an indie picture, which relied more on camera angles, and performances, really helped to make the overall events feel real and unimagined. It really felt like you were watching events unfold in real time, and in reality. Rather than something someone cooked up in their heads. The director, whether this film is really based on true events or not, wanted the viewer or viewers....to believe that it was. And he did this by using certain angles and a certain type of camera to really give the appearance of a reality-based scenario where real murders are occuring.

The good guys in the movie, which are the group of paintballers, are also very well played by the specific actors who represent them. They have their squabbles like most groups of friends do, but they seem more like regular people. Not GAP ad models, or Ambercrombie rejects. Which makes it easier to relate to them, and in some instances, feel pity for them when they start dropping like flies at the hands of this maniac. And this guy is really a maniac. He doesn't want anything specific...i.e., to torture or kill for pleasure.

He simply believes that these people are an invading force of troops, who are transmitting intel on him. And so he wants said transmitter from them, and will use any means to get it. There's always something a lot scarier about a killer who mentally and emotionally, is trapped in a whole different era, than some kid who dawns a mask and costume because some girl at school turned him down for the dance or something.

The actors in the movie, despite it's low production values, performed a lot better than some actors who I've seen in recent studio and modestly-mainstream horror films. I really believed these people were scared, terrified, in pain, and struck by fear at this madman. And while at the end of the day, we all know that this is just cinema, the director did an excellent job of pushing the movies overtones, undertones, and overall look and feel deeply into reality and being reality-based.

The kills are not elaborate or methodical, but they work from a point of realism. Again, the killers objective here isn't to be sadistic or make the victims deaths as painful as possible. But rather extract information from an enemy combatant, which is how he sees these young people who are simply just a group of kids looking to have fun through paintball gamesmanship. It truly is a story of someone from a whole nother time, meeting people from the current reality, and the horrors that come about from the entire showdown.

The films finale is cliche, but in a good way. We get the final paintballer versus the killer in one of those standoff moments, and looking at the group of young adults at the start of the film, you can pretty much guess who the last one left standing to battle the killer will be. That's if you watch a lot of slasher films. The final scene is a big time twist though, and you definitely won't expect it.

"Dead Box" is a good attempt at reality-based indie horror. While the movie stays in one location for the duration, it never gets boring because of the performances by everyone involved. The acting, for once, is the glue that holds this indie pic together.

Positives:The performances, the killer was a lot deeper, interesting, and creepy than killers from most slasher films because he made you believe he was truly psychologically damaged. The final 15 minutes of the film is very well done and intense.

Negatives:The final scene is a tad bit unfair from a moral standpoint.

Overall:Three and a half out of four stars.





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