tdrish Holy hell! I was not expecting the movie to be this good! Clever movie, with a few shocks, a few twists, and just the right amount of violence, insanity, and madness to make this probably the greatest horror/thriller I've seen in a very long time. First of all, forget about the low rating, it's obvious to me that people just do not have an appetite for well made films that involve great cinematography when they see that a film is suppose to be, what they would expect, a horror movie. Yes, this is a horror movie. However, it is more of a psychological horror, a very disturbing, intricately laced horror. I gave this a high rating for several reasons, and I cannot discuss the main reason without spoiling the key points ( not to mention the main plot) of the film. The script is excellent, the dialog is crisp, and the sensation overall is believable. It's not perfect, there's a few flaws, a few plot holes, and at least one scene where I was thinking : "Now, wait a minute. If...ya ya ya..." Can't tell you. I highly recommend watching this, if your looking for a slick, scary, messed up psychological horror film, please rent this, I don't think you will be disappointed.

lathe-of-heaven As much as I roll my unworthy eyes at Claudio's reviews (4 paragraph synopsis of the story, 2 sentence 'review'...) I must admit that I agree with his sparse comments and his rating of this film.I too rated it a '7'. BUT... you have to understand that this is a VERY slow-burn, low-key 'Horror' film where, when you get right down to it, not a whole lot happens. The strong point of this movie is it's well crafted and very effective atmosphere. *** IF *** you can get into Horror films that are mostly comprised of mood and atmosphere as opposed to a lot of Action and violence, THEN you might appreciate and enjoy this movie. I really liked the way the director used the photography and particularly the sound design to create what I felt was, in my lowly and wretched opinion, a very effective and suspenseful, moody Horror film.Don't get me wrong... I frigg'n LOVE some of the all-out kick your balls up behind your ears Horror movies if they are made well, but I also enjoy low-key, well crafted, moody ones like this one. As long as you don't mind the light use of action and violence, you really can get caught up in the moody atmosphere of a movie like this.The acting throughout was also very good, with the principles doing an excellent job in their roles. I think that since the story in itself is so simple and straight-forward, it really falls to the director to be able to bring it all together in such a way to create the suspense and tension in order to make it effective and to do what it is supposed to do.So, unlike one of the early reviewers above who basically sliced and diced this movie telling us in detail WHY it was so bad, if you can appreciate THIS KIND of Horror film as I have tried in my inept way to explain so you can understand, then I would think that there is a good chance that you will find it entertaining. Remember too... it is basically Supernaturally themed, so if movies like that just make you roll your eyes and you feel that they are complete BS, then by all means give this one a pass...Oh, FWIW I really dug the 'BLADE RUNNER' lighting at the very end...

Orpheus_Unlimited Maninder Chana writes a story about a cocky and somewhat unethical ambitious young lawyer that finds himself thrown into a complete Hell when one of his clients unexpectedly kills himself while on a private meeting only days prior to his release from jail.Stephen T. Kay sits in the Director chair trying to build some tension around the story in a by-the-numbers horror movie.And when the only thing that comes to your mind when you see the Writer & Director of a movie is "who?" then you know things are not stacking on the right side. Sure, sometimes unknown Writers can create wonderful scripts and unknown Directors can make masterpieces...sadly neither of those is the case with this movie.The script is a complete mess, and there's a reason for that: this was Chana's first attempt at a "full" story, since his whole career was built over short stories. And you can see that "limitation" permeating into this movie's script.We have the main character Michael Grey (played by Eric Balfour) as a ruthless young lawyer trying to win cases at all costs whose ambition pushes him to do some really questionable things in order to "secure" a win in Court. And then when everything seems to go "according to plans" suddenly everything goes into "Chaos Mode".And that's when everything goes awry: almost everything in the story is just completely ridiculous without any sort of verisimilitude whatsoever. Plot elements come and go without any sort of actual explanation. Characters are introduced without any idea of "what to do with them", sometimes even introducing totally pointless characters into an already confusing plot. It seems as if the Writer just doesn't know how to tell a detailed tale and just purposely keeps everything vague as a way of not bothering explaining anything.In Kay's case, his best work has been the 2000 flick Get Carter, with Sly Stallone. So...yeah, he's no Martin Scorsese.In the acting department Eric Balfour does a somewhat acceptable job as the lead character, followed by Michael Rooker, in one of his usual roles: a despicable and twisted prison-officer-with-a-moral- standard-of-his-own. Bruce Greenwood does an awful job as South River State Penitentiary's Warden, with a dull and uninspired performance. And Deborah Valente plays Audrey Davis, a Correctional Dept. officer best described as "forgettable".Bottom line: -Confusing, convoluted and sloppy script-Average directing job-Average-to-Mediocre acting-Standard photography-Bad FX-Not scary-Not "profound"-No jump scares-Awful as a Thriller-Awful as a Horror movie-Awful as a Supernatural story-An all-around weak movieIf you're into masochism there's better things to do to achieve your goal. This movie is 109 minutes of pure boredom from start to finish. Stay far away from it.

Flow It started out good, and gave me some clues as in it could be even better. For a while there, it did do so, but then it reached half point.Disaster! You lose interest, the movie becomes fuzzy, unclear, some pointless scenes, some plot holes and as another user said, what a disappointing finale...Cell 213 is as underground as possible, even tho it has quite a distribution, some good actors in it, but the plot never gave them a chance. Will not recommend it, not even for a horror junkie.Cheers!