The Horror Show
The Task
by Alex Orwell
It was a dreadful task to watch this horror movie indeed. Bad acting, worn out plot, and a cheesy outcome is what a viewer can get from The Task. After Dark Films did it again with another catastrophe, adding one more to the list of its regrettably seen films like Crazy Eights and The Graves.
The Task is the scary story of a reality tv-show that turned into a nightmare. Six contestants are Saw-ishly snatched and thrown into a haunted abandoned prison. Each of them has to complete a task that will guarantee their stay in the show and their claim of the $20,000 prize.
Connie (Alexandra Staden), the ruthless producer of the show, is in for a big surprise as things won't go as planned. The deadly ghost of the warden and his vicious instincts will disrupt the smooth running of the game. What is really worth mentioning about The Task is the inexplicably bad acting. Tacky dialogues, predictable characters, awful dramatic reactions. Being trapped inside a box full of feces, someone would probably be utterly panicking rather than just breathing heavily saying in calm voice "Could you please let me out, it's not funny anymore.”
In addition to that, I can't see the point of having an evil moustached ghost haunting an abandoned building without the actors being actually able to cry, scream, and freak out. Let alone not having one decent murder scene. As a viewer, you have to guess that someone has been murdered, imagine it happening, and probably blame the blurry figure of the warden.
The plot changes throughout, which sometimes could be a great twist in the movie and some other times - like this one - is a boring, exhausting, and ridiculous idea. “Who is the real contestant”, “who is the killer”, “is there actually a killer”, “who is messing with whom”, they are all issues to be dealt with delicately. If you can't do it, don't bother.
In this case, they couldn't do it, but they did try. Too bad the outcome was a cheesy, absurd, and disastrous horror movie.
Maria Kriva, HMS
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