The Task
(2010/After Dark/Lionsgate DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Main Program: C+
The game
is simple: 6 college students must spend a night in an abandoned prison, and if
they survive they win $20,000 cash. They
must complete a series of tasks that will test their bodies, minds and sanity,
all designed for maximum terror. As the
camera rolls so does the terror, and what started out as a reality show soon
become a real nightmare. Trapped in a
prison one by one they fall to unseen forces, not knowing if around each
corner there is a madman, and each moment could be their last. This is The
Task, a new thriller which seems old and “tasks” the viewer in many ways.
Trapped in a reality TV horror show, 6 students test their courage to try and win
20 grand. Their tasks includes completing
satanic rituals, being buried alive, and entering a gas chamber and as the film
crew rolls on in attempt to capture their horror, unexpected forces begin to
take things beyond the original written script, including that there maybe a
sadistic inmate still loose, hidden within the prison. What was fake soon become all too real, and by
the time they realize it's no longer a game it's already too late.
This is a horror story (in more than one way), a game that has been taken too
far, where the demons of the mind becomes real, every darkness lies a sinister
story, a blood death around each corner. The tape crew has set the scene in broken,
rusty decaying prison, and has even planted a story along with a few actors
to play the story of former madman inmate who raped, kill and enjoyed the death
of others... but unknown to even the film crew this man was alive, existed,
and was hiding in the abandoned prison, and that one of their actors
was for real.
The picture
and sound are not great and sometimes intentionally, but this is very tired
either way. Extras include behind the
scenes, and trailers.
- Ricky Chiang
