Chain Letter Review

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Keeping up with the modern trend of social media, something that seems to have rapidly afflicted our society and become an obsession, horror films of recent years have quickly begun to encompass these mediums of communication to create new methods of terror. Chain Letter is one of the latest editions employing this stance on horror, attempting to expand upon the simple formula of a hack’n’slash film to incorporate the device of an internet chain letter which works as effectively as scrawling a big red X on each one of the victims foreheads.

Taking a page out of The Ring’s rulebook, a film that can be seen to be one of the most influential horrors of recent years, Chain Letter abides by similar conventions, with the only escape from a painful, gruesome death being the passing on of this chain letter via email. It is an interesting idea that, with a bit more effort put in, could have resulted in an intriguing film, the premise of signing away a friend’s life by clicking the mundane ‘send email’ button to save your own skin playing into darker themes of guilt and sacrifice for personal gain. Unfortunately, Chain Letter doesn’t make too much of an effort to explore this side of things, and decides to focus more upon the killer, a hugely scarred man who has a fetish for metal chains.

This means the premise of the film, the chain letter, is put on the back burner and instead the camera focuses in upon this monster who, for no reason explained, decides to slay a handful of high school teens. Unlike successful villains of classic horrors, such as Freddy Krueger and Hannibal Lecter who inspire a real sense of villainy due to their lack of motivation, the villain of Chain Letter is lacking in any kind of depth to give this absence of reasoning to his chain letter killings any sinister sway. Eventually he turns into more of a comical figure as you see this hulking mass of a serial killer perched over a computer screen looking on facebook, evolving Chain Letter into a parody, unwittingly poking fun at the idea of films that merge together elements of horror with social media platforms.

Being a horror film that takes more delight in the gory death sequences rather than focusing upon the interesting aspects of its initial premise, Chain Letter becomes just another entry in the teen horror catalogue, setting up a stereotypical cast of high schoolers, and then picking them off one by one with gruesome aplomb. The directing doesn’t bring anything particularly original to the table, with the opening scene being the most memorable which sets up a particularly gory sequence that any one of the various Saw sequels would be proud of. But the promise this opener gives is dashed as Chain Letter becomes bogged down with the building mountain of amputated teen limbs.

What starts off as an exciting idea with a brutal opener, Chain Letter quickly devolves into a murder by numbers horror that is neither original nor interesting, a fact made more frustrating as the narrative device of the chain letters could have allowed room for a wealth of twisted themes and characters.

2/5