Here’s a brief summary of the blandly efficient first 15-minutes of Australian horror 6 Plots: seven disposable high-school students are introduced (the actors are all in at least their early 20s). They discuss a get-together to be held at an absent parent’s beach house after school that night (the collegiate banter is cringe-worthy but unavoidable).They each make their way to the beach house and there follows an appropriately tame party montage (heavy petting and implied drug use).
This prelude out of the way, the film gets properly started with a moderately effective sequence albeit one unfortunately reminiscent of The Hangover in which six of the partygoers awaken from their drug- and alcohol-induced slumbers to find themselves trapped in coffin-shaped boxes.
The film’s distinguishing idea’ is its reliance on communication via technological devices: the only member of the party not to have been abducted receives a bizarre message on her mobile telling her that she has to locate and rescue each of her friends as part of a sinister game; each abductee is allowed to keep their phone and make conference calls as long as they don’t involve parents and authorities; and their ordeal is being filmed via webcam and broadcast to nerds online all over Australia.
Accordingly, the script is loaded with Facebook puns and interminable references to phone batteries, iPods, lappies’ and PS3s. Frankly, 6 Plots will never be mentioned alongside such technology-based horror classics as Cronenberg’s Videodrome or Nakata’s Ringu. A conventionally creepy killer-thriller rather than a surreal gross-out or twisted mind-shag, 6 Plots instead resembles an extended episode of Goosebumps or, if we’re being generous, Are You Afraid of the Dark? aimed at a slightly older teen audience.
As often with straight-to-DVD Horror-Lite, I want to award its creators points for workmanship, and indeed, 6 Plots unashamedly embraces cliché with endearing abandon. For the best part of an hour, it aims low and gets the job done. Unhappily, though, the premise runs out of steam pretty quickly, and rather less forgivably, it all leads up to an extremely unsatisfying denouement.
Overall Verdict: A well-meaning, passable teen shocker but it’s difficult to recommend 6 Plots over an evening of YouTubing vintage episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Special Features:
Trailer
Reviewer: Tom René