The Task - Horror Spot DVD Review

The Task - Horror Spot DVD Review

By Jose

Plot:

A group of unlucky reality show contestants must survive the night in a haunted jail.

Cast:

Alexandra Standen (Connie), Adam Rayner (Taylor), Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Angel), Ashley Mulheron (Shoe), Amara Karan (Toni), Tom Payne (Standen), Marc Pickering (Randall), Texas Battle (Dixon), Valentin Ganev (Warden)

Review:

Six young adults have been hand-selected to participate in a reality television show. Kidnapped at first, then all is revealed when they arrive at the prison location. Now the show begins.


1) Shoe (Ashley Mulheron): The ambitious, ditsy one of the bunch.

2) Dixon (Texas Battle ): The muscular, masculine presence in the film. As he notes early on, "people used to say" that he looked like Will Smith, "but now they say Barack Obama." Yes he says that.

3) Toni (Amara Karan): The cerebral one who is given embarrassing lines such as, "I have the IQ of Stephen Hawking and Einstein... put together."

4) Angel (Antonia Campbell-Hughes): Younger sister of Stanton. Fearless, money-driven. A Brit.

5) Stanton (Tom Payne): Older brother of Angel. The substance of his character is that he was dropped on his head when he was two. Also a Brit.

6) Randall (Marc Pickering): Self-professed "off-the-hook gay" man whose favorite book is OK Magazine. As the doors open to the prison early in the movie, he affirms, "And I thought coming out of the closet was scary..."

These six characters, in exchange for $20,000, agree to spend the night in an abandoned prison. A number of atrocities were committed there in the past by a deranged warden.
Once inside, each of the six characters has to perform a task or two that is revealed by a barbed wire-wrapped television set. If they make it through the night, the cash is theirs.
But is the warden still around to "welcome" his visitors?


The Task is an okay movie. The concept is pretty good while the execution needed some help. The scares come from the production truck. Sounds and lights. Some actors dressed as the deranged Warden and what not. It is not until a bit into the film where we see that not all is peachy in this reality TV show taping. The spirit of the deranged and psychopathic Warden starts to pick off kids of the show and production crew. The deaths really don’t pick up until the gas chamber scene where we learn that the Warden use to eat dinner and enjoy watching inmates die in the gas chamber.


One good creepy scene is later toward the end where one of the remaining group finds himself hung up by chains in the middle of the female ward. The Warden walks in with a group of animalistic female inmates. He walks toward the hanging guy and nonchalantly slices his neck open and walks away leaving him bleeding to death. He motions to the female creatures and they all attack and rip apart the kid.


At the end we see it was a joke on the main producer Connie. Everyone is laughing and enjoying themselves we see that there are some actors dressed as the Warden. Yet that last death we saw was real. And the gas chamber was a real death too. And where is Dixon? Ah you see it was real and the Warden is here haunting the place. That evil presence traps everyone and they all suffer by the Warden’s hands.

Final Thoughts:

The Task was a decent concept and had a lot of potential but failed to properly deliver. The actors did what they had to and a couple stood out while others fell flat and you couldn’t wait for them to die.

Ratings: 2 out of 5