CHOOSE

DO YOU WANT SPOILERS, OR A SMACK IN THE MOUTH? YOU CHOOSE.

Hello....I want to play a game. Psycho slashers have been a cinema staple for decades, and we are squarely in that territory here, where a fiendish maniac is extracting some twisted kind of bloody justice from those who he believes have wronged him in the past. The Saw movies, which are absolutely ludicrous but entertaining if viewed as the grimmest of black comedies, probably kickstarted the latest wave of omniscient killers, who can predict exactly what the police, and his intended victims, will do, and can always be ahead of the game. Because to them, it is just a game.

In Choose, the mad killer's angle, his signature move, is to force his victims to make their own choices as to exactly which body parts they're willing to lose, or which family members they'd rather see murdered in their beds. Should the concert pianist lose his hearing or his fingers? Should the supermodel lose her sight or her looks? While the cops flounder helplessly, the Chief's own wannabe journo daughter is targeted by the maniac - not (yet) as a victim but as part of his grand plan. But why her? And what's it got to do with dubious psychiatrist Bruce Dern? What is with the choices? Michael Myers didn't ask you to decide how you were going to die. Jason Voorhees didn't give you options; they just killed and moved on.

Maybe the grand resolution is a bit too daytime soap-opera, maybe the lead actress has been picked more for her willingness to do a shower sequence. And can we please stop doing the bathroom cabinet mirror routine? As soon as you see a bathroom wall cabinet in a horror movie, you know there's going to be something new in the mirror when she shuts it. It was a hokey old cheapshot the tenth time we saw it and that was years ago. Still, despite all that I didnt really mind Choose, though I wouldn't choose to see it again any time soon. Coming after some recent rental selections that varied from mediocre to barely watchable, it came over as perhaps a tad better than it really is. Certainly it's professional and functional: it does the job and doesn't waste a lot of time doing it. "You'll have seen a lot worse" isn't much of a recommendation, but that's really the best that can be said of it. It's no Saw but it'll do. Just.

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If you so choose: