Shuttle (2008)

	Director: Edward Anderson
	Starring: Peyton List, Tony Curran, Cameron Goodman, Cullen Douglas
	Run Time: 107 mins
	Certificate: 18
	Rating:

Plot
Mel and Jules are two young women who return home late at night from a holiday and take a shuttle bus back from the airport along with a couple of young men who have been flirting with them and another older male passenger. The journey seems fine at first but when the driver begins to take them through deserted back streets, they realise that something is up.

Review
If you can handle the silly notion of a single man driving a shuttle bus and managing to keep five other people hostage without cuffing them to the seats then you may enjoy Shuttle. The film has received a lot of negative reviews, scathing in fact. It clearly dresses itself up as "torture porn on shuttle bus" so with the sight of two hot chicks and a sinister-looking driver, you'd be expecting the film to go off in all manner of depraved routes. It doesn't though and I guess this is what is upsetting a few people. It helps to view the film as more of a thriller with horror elements. Although this doesn't make the film any more engaging or entertaining, at least your expectations will be lowered so you won't be as disappointed.

Let me state one thing - the film is based around one daft premise and it milks it for every single penny. Most of the film is set aboard the shuttle bus so get used to it. It's not the most interesting place to set a film and it soon seems stale. The film also becomes quite repetitive once the driver has revealed his intentions as the characters make continuous efforts to escape, all of which fail, backfire horribly or result in one less hostage. The script seems pretty messy for the majority of the film as the driver forces the passengers to complete weird tasks. A lot of things don't make sense or have a purpose but after a while a picture begins to emerge and the whole big reveal at the end about what the driver really wants makes everything clear. Reality seems to go out of the window as the script clearly forgets where the film is being set - aboard a small shuttle bus! Sometimes the people inside act like they're on a plane and the film's concepts of physics and chemistry have a lot to be desired at times. It's got an awesome ending though. I won't give too much away but rest assured it's not the nicey-nice ending we're all so used to. Highly original, extremely downbeat and like a sucker punch to the gut, I'm surprised that it got the green light as a lot of studios like to make sure the audience are happy when the film finishes. When films finish with strong, unexpected endings like this, I always give them an extra half star. It makes the rest of the film make so much more sense and also worth sitting through. You actually appreciate that the film, whilst painstakingly slow at times, was building itself up to this final reveal.

The characters aren't particularly well written. The two young men seem to have walked off the set of a teen comedy such is their one-dimensional attitude to sex and life. The driver seems to have come off the set of a Terminator flick as he takes a lot of damage but like all clichéd villains, seems indestructible and keeps on coming. At least there are attempts to give him some humanity towards the end of the film so that he isn't just a psycho. Tony Curran is menacing enough in the role but as I stated earlier, quite seriously how you'll be able to take him holding all of these people hostage when he's driving remains to be seen. As for the females, well the characters are poorly written, managing to turn the tables around on their captor but not killing him when they have the chance. I guess there wouldn't have been a story if they did but it's extremely annoying and frustrating. Scripts need to find ways to avoid this pitfall but it's an easy copout for the writers to have the hero/heroine be unable to take a life. Peyton List looks like she could be one to watch for future though as she brings the right amount of attitude, sympathy and basically looks hot enough to care about.

Verdict
Shuttle is a serviceable horror-thriller with a killer ending which will leave you reeling and make the rest of film make sense. It's not the greatest film out there and there's a ton of things wrong with it but this is one bus journey worth getting on....just don't be prepared to go to the destination you expect to!