Splintered
Year: 2012
Director: Simeon Halligan
Stars: Holly Weston, Stephen Martin Walters, Scaha Dhawan
Studio: Well Go USA Home Entertainment
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 85 Mins.
“Splintered” is one of those films from Britain that I’ve been following on various horror websites. Well Go USA Home Entertainment released this film for distribution here.
The film follows a troubled teen (Holly Weston), who drags her friends along to the forest. In the woods, they search for a local legend that has haunted the area. What they find is a wild beast that is half animal and half man that kills for pleasure. Soon the beast begins to stalk these kids, as they discover an abandon orphanage. Now the teen must find a way to stop this half man/half beast, before they become his latest victims.
“Splintered” is a very creepy and effective grim fairy tale. Co-Writer and Director Simeon Halligan does a very good making this film very dark and effective. It helped the tone of the movie become very dark, which is needed for a story like this to look good off the pages. The other that I liked about the imagery, it makes the film feel like a dark fairy tale. Halligan does a very good job with the way that he handles some of the film’s scarier and bloody moments. There were some deaths that comes out of nowhere and grabs your attention. He’s able to do that effectively, by keeping the identity of the villain off screen for most of the film. It’s done effectively that it keeps your interested and entertained throughout. He also does a very godd job handling the young actors performances. I liked, how Halligan was able to make the performances fit the tone of the film. There was never a moment, where I thought that the young actors were annoying. The performances were serious and not playful, which helped made some of the film’s more climatic scenes more intense.
The screenplay written by Halligan, Stephan Trimingham and Mat Archer does a very good job making the film feel very intense and interesting. One of the reasons for it, they do a very good job making the tone of the film very dark. This film felt like a dark fairy tale with the way the flashbacks were handled and the nightmares that the main character has during the course of the film. I liked, how they conceived those sequences. It makes the story very dark and that you fall into this film’s world. Clearly, this has a grim fairy tale charm to it. The other thing that I liked about their screenplay, they keep you guessing if it’s the abductor or someone else brutally murdering these people. That is something that I didn’t expect going into this film. I thought this would be you normal werewolf film, but instead they turn it upside down with the way they keep you guessing to who or what is killing these characters. That’s when you know that you’ve watched a very good horror film.
DVD Extras:
First on the Blu-Ray is the behind the scenes featurette for “Splintered”. It’s a good featurette, even though it has a very different feel compared to other behind the scene featurettes. It’s divided into chapters and covers most of the production aspects in the beginning including CGI, Music, Cinematography, but it felt out of sequence to me. It’s informative, but I expect to see those towards the end of the featurette. It also spends time with interviews from the actors and director, which I liked. Overall, a good featurette that could have been better, if structured properly.
After the behind the scenes featurettes, there are a couple of deleted scenes and trailers to wrap up the DVD.
Final Summary:
I enjoyed this film a lot, as this film that keeps you entertained with a good story and good directing from Simeon Halligan. “Splintered” is a horror film that blends fairy tale elements with brutal violence effectively.
Review Rating: Four Stars
DVD Extras: Two Stars
