Roman Sampson
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Leofwine_draca
THE TORMENT is another familiar low budget supernatural horror film, this time with a British slant. The style of the movie is clearly influenced by the likes of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, but the decision to shoot 90% of the scenes in a dark house and the excessive use of shaky cam means that viewers are unable to see or even make out much of what transpires. Before long you won't even care, given that the characters are so unengaging.The narrative is a cheap three-hander in which your boringly average couple are visited in their home by one of the husband's friends. Unfortunately for them he's brought a demon with him, so lots of screaming and running around ensue. If I had found any of this in the least bit frightening I might have enjoyed it more, but as it stands it's all rather dull. The ending is boring in its expected ambiguity, and the acting is rather wobbly, particularly from Francesca Fowler.
GL84
Visiting a group of friends following a nasty break-up, a man finds their house under assault by shadowy, grotesque beings that are utterly remorseless in trying to get at them, forcing them into a long, blood-soaked night to fend them off.This is yet another in a long, long list of utterly terrible British horror efforts. Of the biggest factors hurting this one is it featuring all the hallmarks of their later films all brought together in a singular whole, starting with pace that features no energy, momentum or excitement. The first half is mainly built around the discovery of her behavior and then meeting up with her friends at their house for several nights complaining about the situation or meeting the neighbors, all of which are a large number of scenes that offer up hardly anything in terms of scares that leave large portions of the film utterly boring. Another big problem here is a series of seemingly scary scenes ruined by the irritating camera that won't stop moving to give you a clear idea of what's going on, either being so dark and devoid of light that it's too shadowy and tough to make it out, or the scenes are filmed similar to a first-person perspective where everything is just out of eye-sight so it's a quick edit away or just so scatter-shot to tell definitely what's happening. The last big flaw here is a decided lack of explanations as to what's happening, so even though there's a few newspapers and the drawings nothing is really definitively given here beyond an utterly lame attempt using a glass like an Ouija Board so it's almost impossible to find anything worthwhile in here. There's at least some halfway decent scenes here, mainly the first home attack scene in here where the darkened house comes from the lack of light around the area leading to plenty of screaming around looking for answers, a vicious escape attempt with the creatures in the room prompting some pretty intense action with the creatures at the end. It's only other decent scene is the freak-out at the end to keep this one with at least a little action throughout here as the scenes of them trying to keep him calm as he frantically tries looking around for the creatures allows a little bit of suspense here, but overall it's still not nearly enough to really make sense of the situation as what could be seen in the situation doesn't make it clear what's going on. Overall, this one isn't really worth it.Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence.
onmiwy
I give this movie a 4.5 because at the very least it kept me watching long enough to reassure my "guess" about who the monster(s) really was. I believe David killed his girlfriend Sarah and the demons chasing him were his own guilt manifesting itself.His best-friend fell into his hallucinations only as a best friend could.In the last ten minutes of the movie his best friend's girl begins to realize just how insane David's behavior is when she starts resisting to give into the mass hysteria slowly trying to take over the lot of them by refusing to turn out the light.It was a little annoying for obvious reasons(after reading David's journal neither his best friend or his girlfriend's reaction was believable.....at this point you really have to questions David's sanity just a little more as he is hanging around their house looking like strung out drug addict).Also the best friend and David are running around in most of the movie with knives in the dark so I expected someone to at least get a nick a little earlier on.In closing they show David's best-friend's girlfriend laying on the hallway floor(you can tell by the distinctive tile where she is),with a bloody gut wound. Quite obvious to me it was inflicted by David as she wrestled him to escape.In panic mode I don't believe she knew how mortally wounded she was and kept going until she made it to the hallway and then passed away.I enjoyed this movie because it took very little effort to figure out but still had some "jumpy" parts. I do feel the whole movie/story could have been done as a short and would have been much more effective.
Amanda Soto
Let me at least say that I liked the camera work right away (but could not stand the audio). I liked that there weren't any cheap gimmicks you almost always come across in the horror genre. But that's the only praise I can give this film. There was a lot of useless exposition and scenes that did little to nothing to further the plot. It lacked timing and it didn't use its effects to their full capacity. I didn't jump once during this movie, but I did get bored and wondered when the scary stuff was coming. The ending was predictable. The part where they're running around the building with nothing following them was just annoying. It had all the components that should scare its audience with unseeable things that are lurking in the dark yet failed miserably at utilizing them, because it showed what the monsters looked like too soon. It was frustrating because supposedly these things can prey on you even if you can't see them, but they never actually did anything (except at the very end). Also, didn't these people have jobs? Why didn't they just leave?
