Die Review

I’ve seen a lot of movies that copy others. Look through the archives of Scary Film Review and you will see a great deal of movies that I have watched and talked about that are completely ripped off from another famous or infamous movie. When I first read the premise for “DIE” I figured it was another clone of the “SAW” series, and while it pretty much is, there is a little bit of gusto to think about that will make you think a little.

The first thing that I noticed about the movie was the way they shot the main villain; he played and talked in the same manner that Bruce Wayne would talk. If you mixed the Dark Knight and Saw you would get this villain named Jacob. He speaks as though he’s doing something noble, but in reality he’s making another stab at The League of Shadows, only this is far more gruesome.

We are presented with a story about salvation, but it’s not what you might think. Six people show up in a dark warehouse and are wondering what is going on. They each have to roll a dice in order to see whether or not the other person will die. After going back and forth between different people, there are only a couple of people left to kill off before the villain reveals the purpose of this entrapment. Meanwhile, there is a rogue detective on the hunt, trying to figure out what is going on, who is kidnapping people and whether or not they are still alive.

The movie does a lot of things well, especially setting up a believable type of cult scenario. Jacob is by all intents and purposes a better villain than Jacob, and the “Jesus” salvation complex and visuals definitely plays to the favor of the movie. There was a bit of a slowdown in the middle of the movie, but after that, this thing truly went off the rails.

The visuals are nice, not too gorey, and there are sequences that were lifted directly from the Batman movies. You switch characters in here to match up the latter and it would be just fine. I found that to be the most compelling thing about this movie, which really plays like a made for television mini-series more than a full fledged film.

DIE is not a great movie, but it’s adequate and does the work that the SAW sequels didn’t get done in 5 tries. I liked it enough to recommend it, so make sure that you check it out. If you want a movie that mixes genres, this is definitely worth checking out. If you miss it, you’re not going to kick yourself, but if you’re a horror fan, you have to check it out. It’s another piece to the puzzle of watching all things scary movie. Hey, if I could sit through it, you probably can too, so check it out today.