Choose

by Katerina Sakkas | July 16, 2012 17:30 | Edited July 17, 2012 09:47

“...a simplified version of Se7en and Saw that lacks the former’s psychological complexity and the latter’s ingenuity.”

The killer at the centre of this thriller plays a familiar game with his victims, forcing them to choose between two equally horrific outcomes. Unsurprisingly, the choice offered is a morally loaded one linked to the victim's identity and history. In this regard, Choose is following a path forged by superior films. It's a simplified version of Se7en and Saw that lacks the former's psychological complexity and the latter's ingenuity.

Director Marcus Graves does succeed in building suspense and a certain dark atmosphere, but there are serious lapses in credibility that disrupt his film's narrative flow. Why, for example, is the police detective assigned to investigate the case initially so quick to dismiss a possible threat to his journalist daughter?

Despite an interesting cast that includes Katheryn Winnick, Bruce Dern and Lenny von Dohlen, the characters in Choose are never fully realised, their actions primarily serving to further the rather far-fetched plot. Relationships that would have made the film's violence more chilling are undeveloped.

A thriller of this sort needs, in the manner of Se7en, to plumb the depths of its antagonist's depravity. Choose contents itself with merely skating over the surface.