PSYCHOSIS

Psychosis (2010)
Directed by: Reg Traviss
Written by: Michael Armstrong, Reg Traviss
Starring: Charisma Carpenter, Justin Hawkins, Paul Sculfor, Ricci Harnett

Reviewed By Ross Hughes

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZymOLSocvUM[/youtube]

Oh dear Cordy!  What have you become?

My sole intention of watching this british horror was for the charms of the lovely Charisma Carpenter who delighted me for years in the classic TV show Buffy and more so in the spin off Angel.  For a few years Carpenter was linked with the Wonder Woman role but it seems the fame and memory of being the next big thing is slowly fading and poor Charisma is now reduced to cameos in films like Expendables or in this, a dire horror that sucks the life out of all those who are watching.

Psychosis is so badly written that you spend the majority of the time hiding your face under the pillow.  Usually that is a good thing for horror, but here you use it as an excuse to hide the embarrassment of watching or even in my case buying this pile of crap.  We start in the snow.  A bunch of eco warriors decide to pitch up a tent in protest of a planned motorway being put through the woods in which they are standing.  Of course its totally freezing, but two of the people decide to go for a walk.  Now being a man, if a woman wants to go for a walk and gives you that little twinkle in her eye it only means one thing, but even I would not consider it when its soooo cold outside.  I mean when they speak you can actually see the words in the cold air, and the first thing I would want to do is impress the girl if she is going to go somewhere with her hands that she has not gone before.  But snow+cold= not a very big boy, but this does not stop this young man running after her with his tongue hanging from his mouth.   What happens next though shows the quality of the film, a few kisses and she mutters “Guess what I want to do?” well love, I am no genius but I think I know what you want,  it begins with S and ends with X, and its not the word Six.  But shock horror! She doesn’t.  ” I want to play hide and seek!” she cries.  Oh, so we both over the age of twenty, in a middle of a nowhere in a forest and you want to play  this????  For some reason, this idea thrills the boy even more than the idea of having sex and once again his tongue is out in excitement.  We go back to the tent where another couple are actually having sex, a lame scene that is sees them grind together in slow motion.  We cut back to the game of Hide and Seek, where the tension for the viewer is unbearable, “find her!” you shout, please, and he does, but she is tied to a tree and before he can scream ” I found you” he is killed by this mad man lurking in the woods, who thankfully then kills the girl which helps ease the suffering of our ears from the worst high pitch scream you could hear.  This head nut  then goes into the tent, where this man is putting me to shame by still going strong with this girl, when the psycho, starts to lick her feet.  Its a funny moment, because he must lick it three times before she even notices.  The couple scream, the boyfriend gets an axe in the head, and she somehow escapes…..

Now this event needs to be forgotten for the rest of the film.  It does come to the fore towards the climax, but until then, the slash moment while piss poor is the high light to what comes next.  Its here we see Carpenter playing Susan, an American crime writer who after nearly a mental breakdown, retreats to an old mansion in the middle of nowhere with her boyfriend David (Paul Sculfor).  Of course, a house like this must be haunted, and on the first night Susan hears a noise and sends David to take a look.  Its a scene which I laughed until I dropped, because he picks up a torchlight from the bedroom, flashes it around on the hallway, walks down the stairs in the pitch black then reaches for the light switch……downstairs!!!!!  So what are you telling us? There are no lights on the top floor???  Every time they go to bed, they have to reach the bedroom holding a torch every night.  Before we can get over that shake of the head moment, we then watch Susan take a walk in the woods where she encounters a man and woman playing hide and seek…no sorry, having sex, she stops, stares, the man sees her, stares back, and carries on doing the business while looking at her.  Susan runs away but before she can reach the mansion, she sees him again, and he smiles and drops his pants!!  She screams and he vanishes.  The very next day David calls Susan to tell her that he has hired a new gamekeeper by the name of Peck (Ricci Harnett) who just happens to be the flasher.  Normal people would phone the police but David convinces Susan that it was probably a misunderstanding so she takes him on…….Misunderstanding???? What his belt snapped? He was shocked to see Susan staring back at him when he was doing that girl but felt obliged to carry on???

So Susan sees ghosts….a young boy playing football in the garden is there one minute and gone the next…….wait for it, please, Justin Hawkins from The Darkness appears on the telly singing in that high pitch voice, then appears in front of her on the street before vanishing.  Peck the flasher decides to cook her food while her husband is away and then we witness what seems date rape, but how can we be certain when in the morning Susan quickly dismisses it.  Bath water runs red which is put down to rust. We also get an ugly scene of what seems an orgy, and of a man asking a woman to sit on glass table naked while he looks underneath.  Seriously, what were you thinking Carpenter agreeing to this shite.

I really can not be bothered to write anymore on this!

The film bores on until we get to the climax, underneath it all it wants to make the viewer question whether all these events are real or just in Susan’s head, and by the time you get to the answer its neither.  It seems Carpenter was playing Cordellia after all, and that is only a spoiler if you are a massive fan of Angel!!!

OVERALL: Awful film.  Seriously, bad acting, terrible script and while Carpenter may have not been the strongest actress in the universe of Sunnydale she still deserves more material than this horror which is heavily influenced by the 1983 horror Screamtime……

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