This is an adaptation of a work by Agatha Christie, although without many of her usual trademarks - no smarmy Belgians or pottering old ladies here, just ten nasty people trapped in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, being killed off one by one. The killer is among them, but who is it? Well, apart from the fact that the director likes giving long close-ups of one particular character for no obvious reason, a better answer might be - who cares? They're all nasty pieces of work, quite a few can't act for toffee, so kill 'em all, I say.
As if that isn't bad enough, the characters tend to speak solely in long chunks of exposition, and the whole thing is directed and written by people who clearly take 'plodding' to be a compliment. The worst of it, though, is that the characters in this suffer from a terminal case of passing the idiot ball. Hey, we're in a mysterious house where we're being killed off one by one - let's split up! And then explore the dark basement! What could possibly go wrong? Let's wander out into the ruins, alone! Or into the desert, wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying one small bottle of water! Not exactly for the first time in a movie like this, I felt the characters were only behaving this way because the plot told them to, and most were so stupid they deserved to die.
Oh, it's not irredeemably bad - with a cast like this, how could it be? But the actors, clearly hired from the Utterly Random Casting Agency, aren't given enough to do, or enough freedom to properly ham it up. As each character is killed, you expect them to show at least a little emotion, but mostly they just look like a bunch of actors waiting on a cheque.
It takes until the third death before someone says 'This isn't a game any more.' Perhaps if someone had been bright enough to realize that fact after the FIRST person was murdered, I wouldn't have been wishing so fervently for them all to get killed.
As if that isn't bad enough, the characters tend to speak solely in long chunks of exposition, and the whole thing is directed and written by people who clearly take 'plodding' to be a compliment. The worst of it, though, is that the characters in this suffer from a terminal case of passing the idiot ball. Hey, we're in a mysterious house where we're being killed off one by one - let's split up! And then explore the dark basement! What could possibly go wrong? Let's wander out into the ruins, alone! Or into the desert, wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying one small bottle of water! Not exactly for the first time in a movie like this, I felt the characters were only behaving this way because the plot told them to, and most were so stupid they deserved to die.
Oh, it's not irredeemably bad - with a cast like this, how could it be? But the actors, clearly hired from the Utterly Random Casting Agency, aren't given enough to do, or enough freedom to properly ham it up. As each character is killed, you expect them to show at least a little emotion, but mostly they just look like a bunch of actors waiting on a cheque.
It takes until the third death before someone says 'This isn't a game any more.' Perhaps if someone had been bright enough to realize that fact after the FIRST person was murdered, I wouldn't have been wishing so fervently for them all to get killed.