Keep Watching: The Hughes Verdict!

Keep Watching (2018)
Directed by: Sean Carter
Written by: Joseph Dembner
Starring: Bella Thorne, Chandler Riggs, Ioan Gruffudd, Natalie Martinez

What is it all about?

Home intruders force members of a family to play a terrifying game of life or death. As the mysterious rules become clear, they soon learn that their nightmare is streaming live to viewers all around the world.

The Trailer:

The Verdict!

Having sat on a dusty shelve for the past few years, hence the reason why Bella Thorne (The Babysitter) and Chandler Riggs (Carl- Walking Dead) look so young, Keep Watching is a tiresome horror that fails to add anything new to the genre, instead ripping off many elements from far more superior films.

Hitting you straight in the face with a heavy mix of The Strangers, Saw and a hint of Halloween, this straight to DVD offering may lack originality but to be fair, it just about serves as a perfect lazy watch for a late night Saturday offering, especially for those who can’t get enough of their Home Invasion horrors.

Basically and you must suspend a huge amount of disbelief to even begin to enjoy what is on offer, a couple of psychopaths have decided to raise the game of murder by posting it all on the internet.  What they do is simply break into people’s houses, hide loads of little cameras to spy on the unsuspected family and then when they ready, pounce and kill them all, before a live stream audience.

Sounds like a wicked idea right?  Well it would be if so many films over the last few years haven’t done this trick before and while the likes of Funny Games kept the premise simple and yet delivered the chills to maximum effect, the offering on here at times feels so slow with the majority of the opening being focused on us spying on the Mitchell family as they go about their business at night.

I am all for slow building tension, but the film is so clumsy put together that any chance of character build up is non existent with the closest being the obligatory Step child hates Step Parent plot vice that goes right out of the window as soon as the terror starts.  Thankfully the film has a short running time that means 45 minutes of nothing happening and then the last half hour of screaming and mayhem which I guess by then the majority of you will either have given up or gone past the point of caring.

I, like the title suggests, kept watching, maybe admiring the decent Halloween inspired shots that temporary makes you forget the other unexplained camera angles that borders on ridiculous.  The cast that includes the likes of Ioan Gruffudd all have the expression that they want to be elsewhere and when we get to the laughable “twist”, you really can’t call it a twist as many of you will probably know its coming from a mile off.

The final moments sets up a sequel that is never going to happen, so basically if you looking for a stupid, home invasion horror that doesn’t really have an ending, then look no further.  Keep Watching is not ghastly or unwatchable, its just pretty much pointless and if you do stick to the end, will instantly be forgotten!

Rating: