DeadTime (2012) starring Laurence Saunders, Carl Coleman, Elisabeth Shahlavi, Alex Marieka Hanly, Leslie Grantham, Terry Christian directed by Tony Jopia Movie Review

DeadTime (2012)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Laurence Saunders in DeadTime (2012)

A Wate of Time

Struggling band "Love Meets Murder" have not had a hit in ages and their manager Jimmy (Carl Coleman) knows he has a battle on his hands when it comes to persuading the record company to give them one more chance to come up with a decent album. But he does on the understanding from studio boss Tommy McEvoy (Terry Christian) that the band and their entourage lock themselves in an old studio in Westbury for a weekend to record a new album and music video. The trouble is that they find themselves the target of a psycho with a knife that holds some kind of grudge and are going to have to put aside their differences and petty squabbling to survive.

Independent UK horror is not for everyone and I don't just mean audiences across the pond but British horror fans as well because the mix of grim and amateur makes for a laborious way to spend 90 minutes. That is the trouble with "DeadTime" an independent UK horror which right from the word go with an opening scene which not only features Terry Christian but Leslie Grantham quite literally phoning in his part struggles to make you want to watch. It all feels so amateur, the sort of thing the guys in drama class might have put together when you were at school.

But it is not just the amateur, low budget look of "DeadTime" which makes it hard going as the storyline of a group of people stuck in a building with a knife wielding psycho is such a tired cliche that to be interesting a movie needs to fire on all other cylinders which this doesn't. The worst things is that when it comes to the horror side of things it simply fails to create anything close to atmosphere and instead relies on poorly constructed cliches such as nudity to try and make it feel like a horror movie rather than making it scary.

Look, I try to find something in every movie I watch that might entertain and sadly in "DeadTime" it is something which for me which is wrong which might entertain someone. I am on about the ridiculously over the top performances especially from those who are in the band, Love Meets Murder. From the squabbling, the 80s punk hair and make up to the eye acting, yes I did say eye acting, it borders on the entertainingly bad.

What this all boils down to is that "DeadTime" isn't very good and in fact is at times hard work to stay with but I would imagine that if you enjoy bad British horror movies this might be entertaining for being bad. The one thing I will add is that I have watched worse.


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