When Kill Theory begins, a psychiatrist named Dr. Karl Tuftin (Don McManus) is recapping the life and times of one of his patients, telling him about his own past and explaining to him what he probably already knows. It seems that this guy was involved in a climbing incident where he had to cut his friend's rope in order to save his own life. As such, he's a bit messed up. At any rate, with that painfully obvious set up scene out of the way, we head out to a nice cabin out in the middle of nowhere and meet up with a group of stereotypical slasher fodder teenagers.

These kids are all hanging out to celebrate their pending high school graduation, but as luck would have it, they're celebrating a little presumptuously because a maniac has got his eyes on them. He decides to play a little game with them and to force them to kill one another of. If there isn't only one person left standing by 6am he'll make sure each and every one of them dies a slow and painful death. And so his contest is off and running as the 'contestants' try to figure out how to best deal with this situation without actually dying or having to kill their friends.

The influences here are very, very obvious. Both Saw and Battle Royale seem to have had a pretty big impact on this film, which started life under the alternate title of Last Resort. Written by Kelly C. Palmer and directed by Chris Moore, it's an entertaining enough picture but it's certainly not without its flaws. The biggest problem with the film is that it's made painfully obvious from the beginning just who the killer is. It won't take any sort of genius to figure out who is behind it all and so right there any sense of mystery that the film might have had is sucked right out of the movie. The other major issue here is that none of the teenage 'victims' are particularly likeable and each one is an obnoxious stereotype. We get a chubby guy (Daniel Franzese who is the best actor of the bunch) without a girlfriend, a nerdy guy, a few horny ones and a couple of party animal types. These are all characters that we've seen countless times in better and more original slasher films, and it's hard to like them. If you can't like them, you can't really invest much in them and then all of a sudden the suspense that should have played a key part in the movie is rendered null and void.

That said, despite the frequently dopey script problems, the film has its moments. The opening kill scene is an impressive one and it does get rid of the most obnoxious one of the bunch right off the bat. It's a small mercy, maybe, but the film earns some bonus points for a creative kill right out of the starting gate. There's also a reasonably interesting twist that occurs during the last few minutes of the picture that does go a little ways towards making up for some of the movie's shortcomings. The last half of the picture is definitely better than the first, and a couple of nice moments of atmosphere help move the film along. The pacing is decent, and if the character's aren't so likeable the performers do at least make the most out of the material that they have to work with (Agnes Bruckner is good in her supporting role).

The gore effects are handled fairly well and are plentiful enough that the film definitely earns its R-rating, even pushing it in a few spots. A couple of standout kill scenes include a surprisingly nasty shovel beating, an unfortunate incident with a sharp fire poker, and this occurs alongside the typical stabbings and shootings and periodic limb severing. It's a pretty bloody picture, and the filmmakers' even throw in some fleeting, but welcome, gratuitous nudity in one scene. The exploitative elements are there and they do provide enough to ensure that the film is at least passable entertainment. It's not reinventing the wheel or really branching out on its own to try something new, but it does make for a reasonably enjoyable time killer. Had it done more with the character development and relied a little less on genre clichés it would certainly have scored higher but as it stands, it's worth a watch for fans of horrordom's most bankable subgenre.

Video:

Kill Theory arrives on DVD in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The movie looks a little dark in spots and suffers from some mild color bleeding here and there but is otherwise quite nice. There aren't any obvious compression artifacts nor is there any edge enhancement to complain about. A bit of mild aliasing shows up if you want to look for it but that issue aside, things look pretty good. There are some scenes that look to have had their colors manipulated for artistic effect, and they also come through fairly well.