No? Oh That's because there isn't only one, there's thousands.
Of course I'm speaking of films such as 'The Strangers', 'Ils', 'Silent House', 'Funny Games' and more....
Well, 'Static' is just that. To start with.
The first ten minutes are incredibly quiet as we start off with the main couple dead, yeah, I thought the same, thanks film for basically telling us what happens. We then cut to Johnathon (Milo Ventimiglia - Heroes) writing a new story. He's an author, and we find out a famous one at that. We meet his wife Addie (Sarah Shahi - Person Of Interest) and we find out they are grieving the loss of their son.
Well, one night is going to change everything.
Sara was great as Rachel, I've never actually seen her in anything before this and it was a shame she didn't get a lot of screen time in this movie.
Obviously after the mysterious Rachel is let in, things get a bit creepy. She seems to know everything about the family. (Which neither really pick up somehow).
Eventually, the people with masks make their way into the house and grab Rachel, they then go for our main couple.
Quite early on I was sick of the pointless lack of intelligence from our main characters. I say pointless meaning, by now I'm sure in a film someone must have a reason to be so stupid. To hit the baddies once and run away, to check it out in the first place, to shout at doors allowing everyone to know you're behind it, and so on and so forth. You know, the reason, possibly brain damage might suffice.
The films recurring theme of course is Static. Through phones/cameras/radios etc.
Which gives us a little more than what the standard Tormentor film gives us, and 54 minutes in we finally start seeing the mystery of the Static, and for me it gave away the final twist. I just thought Oh. That's it then, and I was unfortunately proved right.
That 54 minute mark is where it starts getting interesting, as stated it gives us more about the actual Static, and the backgrounds of our characters including the masked men and the death of the main couples child.
But that's also the biggest problem. With it (to me) giving away the big twist, it couldn't deliver anything surprising. However the film did get better for the 20 minutes it had left.
Thankfully.
It needed it.
What it really needed was more mystery and less of people running around aimlessly. It would have been much better that way. There wasn't even any real scares, a few unintentional jumpy moments but it felt like it tried too hard at times. (It could have also had some special features or subtitles at least, but with this being Levin's first release it's understandable why there wasn't any). There was some nice visuals I guess though. Yeah, I'm reaching for something good about the film that wasn't in the last 20 mins.
For a lot of people, it would be a good start to watch the stranger torment films. But if you've already seen one, you've also seen this one, just minus it's particular twist.
So in all, it is worth a one off.
It gets only a
5/10.
You can pre-order 'Static' from Amazon for £11 here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Static-DVD-Milo-Ventimiglia/dp/B00CMA4H78/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369358781&sr=8-1&keywords=Static