The Torment

Following a quiet night in during which they eat a Chinese takeaway and doze in front of a movie on television, Alex and Kate's quiet start to the weekend is rudely interrupted by Alex's best friend, David, who shows up in the early hours with a tale of woe. Over many drinks in the kitchen, David explains how he came to find some photos of his girlfriend in the state of undress in her handbag -- photos that he didn't take.

Although neither of them really want David in the flat, they don't have the heart to throw out, having seemingly just been dumped and with the time nearly now 4 AM. Alex has rigged the apartment with a series of cameras that are all linked to his laptop and automatically upload whatever they may capture to an off-site hard drive so, if they are ever burgled, they will have the video evidence to help catch the perpetrators.

As the night wears on, events become increasingly bizarre and unsettling but, by the morning, everything appears to be okay except the heavily pregnant woman from upstairs, Anna, has walked out to outside their front door and has remembered that she wants to say something but can't remember what it was. If the previous night was a real strain on Alex and Kate's relationship, it is nothing compared to what will follow. Checking his laptop the next day, Alex is gobsmacked to discover that the hard drive is completely full and that the cameras had been triggered frequently throughout the night. Although David appears in the videos, the camera wouldn't be active unless something had triggered the motion sensor first.

The Torment is filmed in a pseudo-documentary fashion although, for many periods, the camera is held by someone other than the three main characters and tends to represent someone's POV so there is a great deal of the aesthetic found in movies like The Blair Witch Project and other 'found footage' horror films.


There is a lengthy period this film in which David unhinged and seems on the verge of hysterics as he is convinced that there are murderous creatures outside the flat who must, at all costs, be kept out and Alex and Kate treat these warnings with a healthy degree of scepticism. However, there are some things that are shown which appear to illustrate that David is telling the truth and that there is indeed some supernatural entity hell bent on killing everyone inside the apartment block. It's around this point that the film asks you to decide whether they really are in danger from a strange, supernatural entity or whether David is just crazy.

Usually I can just watch a film once, know all of the salient points and have already figured out the ending before it was shown on screen. The Torment is very different as it kept me wondering which direction it was going to go right up to just before the final credits rolled. It also never overplayed its hand, keeping much of the information hidden and, when things are revealed, they are done in such a way so you're not sure whether to believe your eyes or not. With a cast of three main characters, you need actors who will deliver solid and utterly believable performances at, fortunately for this film, that's exactly what the cast do.

As someone who got into film precisely because of one that had demonic possession at its core, I found The Torment to be an extremely interesting and involving horror movie that never allowed you to settle and kept you wondering about whether the events are real or imaginary right up until the end.

The Disc

The Picture
For the most part, the picture is extremely good with solid and consistent black levels, bright colours and high detail levels from the high-definition digital source. Of course, with digital there is always a downside and you get it here when the light shines on a white wall, revealing some digital banding, compression artefacts and aliasing. These are only minor quibbles in what is an extremely good visual package with some startling pieces of SFX make-up.

The Sound
The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack does a terrific job of delivering jumps whilst building atmosphere and carries a constant feeling of dread and mystery. The dialogue is very clear and crisply delivered, even in the more frenetic scenes in which the characters are running around and the action follows them with 'shaky-cam'.


Final Thoughts
I really didn't know what to expect from The Torment but was pleasantly surprised, so much so that I watched it twice in about three days and, unusually for a film that relies on giving away as little information as possible, I found it to be just a satisfying the second time around. As low-budget horror films go, this is an extremely well made and well designed film with a fascinating supernatural subplot and great character dynamics.