The old dark house movie gets a torture porn makeover in writer/director Daniel Simpson’s chiller. Desperate to find cheaper digs, four art students decide to squat in an abandoned London property. However, as they celebrate moving in, they quickly realise that they’ve been trapped by a sinister, white-clad figure, who has some very unpleasant plans for them.
Simpson (in his feature-length debut) keeps the camera prowling around the dankly claustrophobic sets, but he struggles to create much tension and invites even less sympathy for the imperilled quartet. The photogenic but stilted cast doesn’t help, either. But, while Simpson’s roving eye is sometimes nastily effective, the unremarkable storyline enforces every generic cliché and too many crucial plot points feel rushed and unpersuasive.
Spiderhole is a continuation of the “torture porn” cycle of horror that is slowly dying out; it’s not a wholly original concept because it borrows heavily from the 2001 British horror The Hole, starring Keira Knightly. It does have good intentions though, that’s for sure but when it comes down to actually delivering the substance-drenched goods, it seemingly shies away to play to the wants of a mainstream crowd.
Writer and Director Daniel Simpson knows how to work a camera to infuse some much needed tension onto the screen but this fails because of other more agonisingly bland and disastrous elements working against it, namely the characters who are practically impossible to feel sorry for because of the preposterous dialogue that flows from their mouths and their painfully 2D personalities.
OVERALL SUMMARY
You can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Spiderhole because it’s obviously done its homework. Visually its perfect, with every dark dreary corner helping to build atmosphere. Sadly it plays out more like a rubbish version of The Hole with the shocking script leaving the cast bundling through a sea of clichés.
