One out of
Five stars
Running time:
88 mins
Badly directed, poorly written and ultimately scare-free British horror flick that looks embarrassingly cheap and completely wastes its talented cast.
What's it all about?
Directed by Eitan Arrusi, Reverb (yeah, it's hard not to think there's a word missing here, isn't it?) stars Leo Gregory and Eva Birthistle as musicians Alex and Maddy who are locked in a music studio overnight by their friend Dan (Luke de Woolfson). When Alex hears a mysterious track on the radio, he downloads it and it's not long before Maddy starts to believe she can hear a strange voice embedded in the track.
When Dan lets them out of the studio, Maddy investiges the track's origins and a record dealer named Wurzel (Stephen Lord, aka Jase out of EastEnders) tells her of the song's occult origins. Sure enough, when Maddy returns to the studio with Wurzel, Dan and Alex's ex-girlfriend Nicky (Margo Stilley), strange things start happening and she becomes convinced that their lives are in danger.
The Bad
There's undoubtedly a decent horror movie to be made out of rock music's occasional dalliances with the occult, but unfortunately, this isn't it. For one thing, the direction is extremely poor – Arrusi has no idea how to generate tension and fails to deliver a single shock, in the mistaken belief that a screechy soundtrack and a few random cutaways to knives and things are enough to provide the requisite scares.
To make matters worse, the characters are badly written (Stiley's character in particular) and the film suffers horribly from 'Why don't they just get the hell out of there?' syndrome – it would make sense if all the nasty moments happened while they were locked in, but that's not the case.
The Worst
In addition, the film completely wastes its talented cast, as both Gregory and Birthistle have done sterling work elsewhere. They're also let down by cheap-looking production design that makes the film quite hard to watch at times.
Worth seeing?
Reverb is a badly made, poorly written and ultimately scare-free horror flick that probably should have gone straight to DVD.