Though bearing many of the hallmarks of your average slasher/stalker genre fluff Cry_Wolf is actually a neat subversion of a tried and tested formula. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends entirely on the viewer’s expectations. The fact that this has been marketed as a more or less straight killer-on-campus flick means that many of its audience will be bitterly disappointed by its lack of bloody death and naked breasts.

The title of the film refers to both the fable (The Boy Who Cried Wolf) and a game of lies the over-privileged gang of students the protagonist falls in with sneak out of their dorms to play at night. This is apt as mistrust and fractured truths are a major theme of this movie. This is a theme that perfectly complements the naturally duplicitous teenage high school world the film is set in. The rather simple and pointless game is perhaps given too much emphasis in the first act and is a little heavy handed in introducing some key ideas but the second and third acts do a fair job of recovering from this fairly minor hiccup.

There is a lot to like in Cry_Wolf, the photography is striking especially for a film of this sort of budget and it really lends a sense of authority to proceedings. There are also some good performances by the young cast with Lindy Booth sexily standing out as the enigmatic Dodger. Julian Morris also does well as the English new-boy to the school and adds a vulnerable humanity to what could have been seen as a very smug character. Jon Bon Jovi’s casting as a Journalism teacher is questionable but he again turns in a surprisingly good performance.

The plot is a little too labyrinthine for its own good with lots of characters doing different things for different reasons and then lying about whether they did these things or why they did them. It becomes a little difficult to track just what is really going on and this may well be the point but it only serves to alienate the viewer. On the other hand however, considering that the audience is kept in the dark as to whether there actually is a real killer or not until quite late in the film the tension is built up very well. The scare moments are developed with great finesse and manage to not give the game away whilst still maintaining an atmosphere of horror.

There are also some much-appreciated aspects of freshness and originality in Cry_Wolf and these serve to further distance it from the horde of wannabes it disguises itself as. The scene where the kids collaborate to create their fictitious killer is a good moment of post-modern fun. The film also makes good use of contemporary technology such as emails, instant messaging and mobile phones rather than all but ignoring their existence for the convenience of the story as many recent films tend to.

Cry-Wolf is a good film, it is well put-together, beautifully shot and intelligently written. It does suffer however from a slight case of schizophrenia in that it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It seems to relish the horror sequences but look down on them at the same time. This all adds up to a good thriller but a disappointing horror film.

Rating 7/10

Review By Matt Compton