Plot
‘The Task’ is a new reality TV show in which
contestants must complete terrifying missions in an abandoned jail if they wish
to claim the substantial prize on offer. Six young students are the first group
to compete for the cash but they are unaware that the jail still harbours the
spirit of the murderous warden who used to torture and kill the inmates before
being executed.
Review
Horror films set around reality TV are nothing new. Heck, they’ve been on the go
for years since the dawn of Big Brother and these daft reality celebrity shows
clogging up our televisions.
So to see The Task released in 2011 (with a couple of reality-style
horrors released in 2002 with Halloween: Resurrection and My Little
Eye) seems to me to be the
result of a distinct lack of originality and risk-taking in the genre at the
moment. Why bother creating a new story when you can just wheel out some
tried-and-tested plot? This isn’t a knock directly at The Task - it’s a
knock at the genre in general at the moment. The straight-to-DVD series of After
Dark 'Originals' (of which The Task is a part of) have been largely
forgettable teen horrors, pimped up a little with fancy covers and made to sound
like the bees knees of cutting edge scare material when really they've been
highly derivative and largely non-descript. I appreciate the sentiment behind
giving new talent the chance to prove what they can do and get their product out
there to a wider audience. But if these are the future of horror, we're in for a
barren couple of years.
The Task is competently made but is nothing more than by-the-numbers teen
horror. Everything about it screams pedestrian from the plot, to the characters,
to the setting, the lack of any sort of tension or atmosphere and modern-day
reliance on flashy editing. It’s the embodiment of a film which will no doubt
keep you interested for its running time but is immediately forgettable straight
afterwards. Director Alex Orwell is no doubt pleased that his film has made it
onto DVD but he should at least learn how to build suspense or create some sort
of an atmosphere. I mean, the setting is decent enough but how many times are we
going to see horror films set inside abandoned jails, asylums or other kooky
places with sinister histories? It's just not fun to watch a group of twenty-somethings
walk around dark corridors and jail cells for the umpteenth time, talking to
each other and generally being irritating to the audience. Are we supposed to
care for this bunch of self-obsessed idiots? After all, they're all in it for
the fame and the money. Forget doing hard work, let's all just take the easy way
out and do reality TV! The usual caricatures are here including the goth girl,
the dumb blonde, etc. Throw in some expendable crew members from the company
running the show and you've got the recipe for a predictable ride.
It's a good hour into the proceedings by the time
things start to get interesting and remotely exciting and that's a bit of a
overstatement. The idea of each character having to do tasks seems to have come
straight out of the Saw films complete with a Jigsaw-style host (a guy in
some clown make-up explains what the characters need to do). But then you've
also got helpings of The House on Haunted Hill thrown in there too, with
the TV crew having devised all manner of weird and wonderful surprises for the
contestants in a bid to throw them off - there's even a ghost walking around the
corridors caught on camera. Only this time Jeffrey Combs is nowhere to be seen.
The first couple of tasks each character has to do are hardly nerve-shattering
and I'm sure if I had been watching this TV show, I'd have turned over long
before the better ones later on. Things do pick up slightly once the vengeful
warden has made his presence felt but we're never really sure of what he is or
why he's there. And if you think his arrival will signal the start of the gore,
then you'll be sorely disappointed too. I'm not quite sure why the film's
certificate is so high (it's an 18 in the UK) because from what I remember, the
film is bloodless. Problems are confounded with a script which messes around
with too many ideas, all pulling in different directions and inevitably ends up
tearing the film apart. The case in point being the overblown finale which makes
no sense and comes right out of leftfield. Either the production ran out of cash
or the writers ran out of ideas. You make the call.
Verdict
The Task takes a long time to get where it’s supposed to be going and even then you’re
not really sure where you’ve ended up. The only thing you realise is that you've
been there before - many times. It's deja vu all over again.
