THE TASK

THE TASK

After Dark Films have, by luck or judgement, released some decent enough films of late: in particular, Prowl took a lot of familiar horror themes but crafted them into something watchable and entertaining. Sadly, The Task (2010) does not continue along these lines, and by the end I felt as though After Dark have in fact lulled me into a false sense of security. Watchable and entertaining, this ain’t.

We start with a guy named Dixon (played by the phenomenally-named Texas Battle) who makes the mistake of trying to help a young woman with some heavy packages – this gets him bundled into a van and driven away. Seems he’s not on his own, either: he’s accompanied by an array of similarly-bundled captives. When they reach their destination – an abandoned jail, but of course – they all find out what they’re doing there. This is reality TV, and they’re the contestants.

It seems that this nauseating array of stereotypes asked to take part in the series: we’re shown their audition tapes (and wouldn’t you know, they were asked about their biggest fears at the same time! I wonder will that come in handy?) The immediate sense is that these are non-characters about to be chased, menaced and carved to fuck without us having anything remotely invested in their fates, and this would be an accurate assessment. They are sent into the spooky former jail to complete challenges, Crystal Maze-style, to try and win a cash prize for their team; meanwhile, a camera crew watch their every move, having designed the tasks to be as superficially scary as possible. But wait! Is that the actual ghost of the evil warden?

Reality TV is depressing and gruelling enough as it is, so for it to form the basis of a horror film, you really need a sense of tension, something bolder than you’d get on the already-excessive television shows. That doesn’t occur here; everything is rather flat and predictable, and the large number of contestants means a long series of challenges riddled with rather silly scares, like the obligatory creepy clown which keeps popping up in Davina McCall’s Big Brother role, and the room filled with dangling baby dolls (obviously a very rare phobia). The filmmakers themselves must have had a sense that this was all going on rather too long, as eventually they start sending contestants out to do their challenges two-at-a-time, rather than solo – which makes you wonder why they started out with this format in the first place. As for the characterisation, forget it – we have caricatures instead (the brainbox, the badass, the bimbo, and a gay man characterised actually rather offensively; do we need a character to refer to him as ‘our homosexual friend’, for example?) These people all come down to us through a juvenile script filled with failed jokes, stilted interactions and platitudes.

When you have such a posse of stock characters, you often find that you will spend the bulk of the film watching them getting picked off in a variety of ways. If this isn’t entertainingly done in its own right, the only hope is for a witty conclusion – something which shows the preceding events in a different light, perhaps. Well, they try to go for that in The Task. However, the old ‘double bluff’ is as hackneyed as everything else: without attachment to the people involved or to the ‘is it? Isn’t it?’ supernatural element, being expected to then accept a surprise turnaround in the plot is asking rather a lot.

Unfortunately then, The Task is weak, unengaging, and doesn’t have enough clout to sustain its twists and turns. This is generic stuff from After Dark; I shall consider my fingers well and truly burned...

Review by Keri O’Shea


 
Released by G2 Pictures
Region 2 - PAL
Rated 18
Extras :
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