Torment

The home invasion sub-genre has seen an unprecedented boom in recent years, with a pretty decent number of quality movies centred around villains breaking into the homes of the heroes. Torment is one such film and certainly doesn’t exceed the bar set by its peers. At times, it has a pretty decent atmosphere and a dirty feel, neither the setting (and old house) nor the villains (shabby hillbillies in dirty clothes, with the heads of plush animals as masks) look squeaky clean, precisely. So far, so good. The problems start with the not very likeable characters, whose family crisis has absolutely no chance to receive even a bit of the viewer’s interest, and who, as it’s typical, don’t hesitate to make bad decisions, which is a little annoying to watch. At a certain point, the film even wants to convince us we are watching some sort of metaphysical revenge of the child against the parents (framed by a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche), which is really too much. As a short, undemanding genre snack, it’s OK, but the expectations set by the effective and depressive trailer were unfortunately not met. The edges aren’t sharp enough for that. (06/17/2014)