Red Mist aka. Freakdog

Released: 2008

Reviewed: 1.9.10
Star rating: 3 out of 5

Arielle Kebbel (Catherine), Sara Carter (Kim), Stephen Dillane (Harris), Andrew Potts (Kenneth), Alex Wyndham (Jake), Katie McGrath (Harriet), Christina Chong (Yoshimi), Michael Jibson (Steve).

Kenneth is the local weirdo, appearing somewhat mentally challenged and having a not well hidden crush on Catherine. One night hazing by local med students lands him in the hospital in a coma but after Catherine gives him an experimental drug his soul is able to leave his body and posess others, starting with those who put him in the hospital.

I was a bit disappointed with this one from the start since it looked a lot like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' and surprise, the film ended feeling like a ripoff of pieces from a lot of other films. The first 15 minutes is plot setup and character development before the film sits and spins stuck at the conversion point between story and horror. Finally jerking firmly into terror mode the film gets a bit better for a while building up to a nice premature psychological scare toward the end. But whoops, it came to soon so they throw a twist in trying to differentiate this film from those it cloned. The result is a mediocre horror flick that really isn't very scary at all and may even have you rooting for the antagonist before all is done.

Acting from Kebbel was pretty good and Potts put forth a decent performance as well. Beyond that the supporting work left a bit to be desired with a general lack of energy.

Camera work, sets and backgrounds were fairly well done though nothing truly special. Special effects were mainly gore shots which were well done and added some value to the film. Dialogue and sound were okay but again, nothing special.

Overall this is a good entry level horror flick if you don't have a lot of experience with the genre. If you do you will spend a lot of time with this one saying 'Hey, they did that in another film already!' With some gore, blood, violence, and foul language save this for older teens and above.