Psychosis is set in England & starts as some Eco warrior protesters set-up a campsite in the middle of the countryside just outside London where a new motorway is going to be built, that night they are all brutally killed by some local man who goes mad. Jump forward over a decade & one of the best selling crime novelists in the world Susan Golden (Charisma Carpenter) & her corporate events organiser husband David (Paul Sculfor) move into a large country mansion near the fields where the murders took place, Susan has writer's block after suffering a nervous breakdown & is feeling the pressure to finish her latest book & feels the move away from California might be beneficial. Susan starts to experience terrifying visions, violent hallucinations, disturbing dreams along with strange unnatural events & believes that her new house may be haunted. Is Susan's new home haunted? Is she having another breakdown? Are there perfectly reasonable explanations for what is happening? Or is there something much more sinister going on...
This British production was written & directed by Reg Traviss & is a feature length remake of the Dreamhouse segment from the British horror anthology film Screamtime (1986) which I have not seen so I cannot compare the two but I have to say that I was reasonably impressed by Psychosis & didn't think it was that bad at all, it's hardly any sort of masterpiece but I felt it had enough going for it to make the 90 minutes I spent watching it worthwhile. The script has me in two minds, while I liked the basic premise & I thought the final twist was particularly good & fairly unexpected it's far from perfect with the chief complaint being that it's so slow & it takes a very long time to get where it's going. The final twist does turn traditional expectation & cliché on it's head quite effectively & at the very least I was interested in where the film was going, there's a supernatural element, a hint of psychological thriller, some straight horror & even a bit of a criminal subplot which all come together reasonably well. Unfortunately I found the two main character's poorly drawn & I was never convinced at any time that they were a loving married couple, Susan is by far the more interesting & developed character of the two. I am not sure what the creepy Peck guy is all about & the scene when he first meets his new boss Susan & flashes his cock at her comes out of nowhere & is quite unsettling!
Set mainly in rural England this looks nice enough with an impressive looking stately home & some attractive scenery. There's some nudity & sex including the aforementioned cock flashing & a strange scene set in a swingers party where a man is seen lying under a clear glass table looking up & then a naked woman sit down on the table which presumably gives the guy a nice view! There are a few flashes of gore but they are few & far between, the opening sequence features several hippies with names like Snake getting killed including an axe to the head & the climax features a gory slit throat. Originally had the working title Vivid which was apparently changed because Vivid was also the name of a porn company & brought about unwanted connections & associations.
With a supposed budget of about $1,200,000 this had a modest budget but nowhere near as low as some films that are being made & getting a wide release, the production values are good & Psychosis is well made. By some strange coincidence Psychosis is actually the second Charisma Carpenter film I have seen in the past couple of days after I saw House of Bones (2011), not that I am a fan or anything but Carpenter is quite cute & doesn't look like she's approaching forty. By the way, Psychosis is far better than House of Bones & Carpenter puts in a much better performance but then there's far more to work with here than she had with the basic House of Bones which only really needed her to turn up on set & not much else.
Psychosis is not a film for everyone, the slow pace & an ending that (judging by the IMDb message board for Psychosis) not everyone seems to understand although I thought it was perfectly simple & made sense within the context of the film up to that point. It comes down to personal opinion I suppose & mine is that I quite liked Psychosis although I doubt I would ever want to see it again.
This British production was written & directed by Reg Traviss & is a feature length remake of the Dreamhouse segment from the British horror anthology film Screamtime (1986) which I have not seen so I cannot compare the two but I have to say that I was reasonably impressed by Psychosis & didn't think it was that bad at all, it's hardly any sort of masterpiece but I felt it had enough going for it to make the 90 minutes I spent watching it worthwhile. The script has me in two minds, while I liked the basic premise & I thought the final twist was particularly good & fairly unexpected it's far from perfect with the chief complaint being that it's so slow & it takes a very long time to get where it's going. The final twist does turn traditional expectation & cliché on it's head quite effectively & at the very least I was interested in where the film was going, there's a supernatural element, a hint of psychological thriller, some straight horror & even a bit of a criminal subplot which all come together reasonably well. Unfortunately I found the two main character's poorly drawn & I was never convinced at any time that they were a loving married couple, Susan is by far the more interesting & developed character of the two. I am not sure what the creepy Peck guy is all about & the scene when he first meets his new boss Susan & flashes his cock at her comes out of nowhere & is quite unsettling!
Set mainly in rural England this looks nice enough with an impressive looking stately home & some attractive scenery. There's some nudity & sex including the aforementioned cock flashing & a strange scene set in a swingers party where a man is seen lying under a clear glass table looking up & then a naked woman sit down on the table which presumably gives the guy a nice view! There are a few flashes of gore but they are few & far between, the opening sequence features several hippies with names like Snake getting killed including an axe to the head & the climax features a gory slit throat. Originally had the working title Vivid which was apparently changed because Vivid was also the name of a porn company & brought about unwanted connections & associations.
With a supposed budget of about $1,200,000 this had a modest budget but nowhere near as low as some films that are being made & getting a wide release, the production values are good & Psychosis is well made. By some strange coincidence Psychosis is actually the second Charisma Carpenter film I have seen in the past couple of days after I saw House of Bones (2011), not that I am a fan or anything but Carpenter is quite cute & doesn't look like she's approaching forty. By the way, Psychosis is far better than House of Bones & Carpenter puts in a much better performance but then there's far more to work with here than she had with the basic House of Bones which only really needed her to turn up on set & not much else.
Psychosis is not a film for everyone, the slow pace & an ending that (judging by the IMDb message board for Psychosis) not everyone seems to understand although I thought it was perfectly simple & made sense within the context of the film up to that point. It comes down to personal opinion I suppose & mine is that I quite liked Psychosis although I doubt I would ever want to see it again.