The conceit in this Australian low-budget horror is a mysterious clockwork box, designed for revenge, which can kill from anywhere and for any reason. Which means the filmmakers are saved from having to conjure up things like suspense or excitement or motives, since all they have to do is have a character go somewhere, indicate to us through various clues (popping light bulbs, creepy shadows) that he or she is about to die, and then, you know, go about it. It's not that a movie can't do the death-at-a-distance thing well. The Final Destination movies were sort of the same idea, and they made up for this lack of suspense by coming up with more and more creative ways to off their characters. Needle, however, doesn't make up for it with any creativity. It sort of wallows in its own lack of suspense.
Ben (Michael Dorman), an American at an Australian university who clearly isn't American at all, inherits a mysterious box from his dead father. He immediately shows to all his friends, who of course start dying off (un-)mysteriously. If inheriting a creepy box wasn't enough of an indication to him that he was in a bad horror film, his choice of friends should have tipped him off long ago. There's the jock, the nerdy one, the sexy foreign lesbian, the sexy non-foreign lesbian, the hot teacher, and of course the wholesome girl-next-door. Also on the scene is Ben's estranged brother Marcus (Travis Fimmel), also a supposed American, whose southern accent wavers almost as much as he does. Fimmel seems to be from the acting school of nervous self-consciousness, and every muscle in his neck seems to scream out "I am acting!"
Then there's the box itself, which, as the movie goes on, devolves from a mysterious and cool Grand Guignol object to a sort of baroque voodoo doll machine or a gold-plated Creepy Crawlers set. The deaths themselves are all the same, with explosions of dark maroon blood, slashes, and body parts flinging this way and that over pale blue or green sets. It's not even the gore I object to, it's the lack of color.
Eventually Ben and Marcus, who is conveniently a crime scene photographer, go about investigating the box as people continue dying around them without anyone being able to do anything or feel anything about it. And, keeping in the grand tradition of bad horror scripts, when the mystery is finally revealed, it's as undramatic as it is nonsensical.
DVD Bonus Features
The usual "Making of Needle" behind-the-scenes special, in case you are curious.
"Needle" is on sale November 29, 2011 and is rated R. Horror. Directed by Jon V Soto. Written by Anthony Egan, John V. Soto. Starring Ben Mendelsohn, Jane Adams, Michael Dorman, Tahyna Tozzi, Jane Badler, Travis Fimmel.
