Jennifer (Horsey) has a good job, a loving fiancee (Southern) - and a insane twin, Norah, who specializes in cutting off guys' dicks after having sex with them. Given her deliberate creation of evidence and witnesses, as she attempts to frame Jennifer as the killer, it's not long before cops (Conway + Ford) knock on the wrong door. Can the innocent woman clear her name, save her boyfriend and deal with the psycho sister? Or will her past come back to destroy Jennifer, and take over her life? I can't say there are any real surprises in the story - the title itself defuses much tension, and we predicted the climax some way before it arrived. There's also the distraction of trying to work out where the film was shot. UK? Spain? Germany? It's a weird Euro-pudding which results, and neither plot nor some supporting actors - Conway in particular - withstand scrutiny.
What the film has going for it, is Horsey's twin performances, individually very solid, and combined in a low-budget but perfectly competent way, using a body-double. [There is also much use of mirrors throughout, reminding the viewer of the two identities on which this centres] While the gore content is mostly in the first half, with a death by firework that will stick in your memory, it's really the final section that is most effective, as the various characters come together in a remote farmhouse. The tension present here is handled effectively by Büld, though it might have been better to have finished things off there, as the subsequent hospital coda seems somewhat unnecessary. The overall result is uneven, but certainly not unwatchable, even if the entertainment value it provides will depend heavily on your tolerance for low-budget horror.
[The film will be released in the US on August 15th, For more information, visit MTI's Redrum website.]
C+
August 2006
