Are You Scared? (2006)Short answer no. Long answer... this movie would have been something if it didn't blatantly take elements of existing horror movies and mush them into a take-six-young-people-and-kill-them-one-by-one typical blah movie we've seen way too many of. What movies does this rip off? Oh lets see.... Saw, The Burning Bed, any movie with a villain that never dies, and any movie about making reality TV shows. In other words, there wasn't an original idea in the whole damn thing. This is how it went:
Six young people you instantly want dead wake up in an abandoned warehouse, having no idea how they got there or why. Soon a voice booms over a speaker asking 'Are You Scared?' and they realize that this is the result of auditions they had performed for a reality show. The auditions included asking them what they fear most (Who is stupid enough to tell the truth about that?). Does this sound incredibly, boringly familiar? It should. It's been repeated more times now than I can count. They now see cameras mounted everywhere. You have your tough guy, your African American guy, princess, tough girl, and brother and sister. Names? Do you really want to know or want to get this over with? That's what I thought.
For two years now the police have been trying to catch a guy who sets people up with impossible tasks that always winds up with them dead (Saw I through VI does it much better and did it first). He's proud of his work, he always lets the cops know when he's done so they can clean up the mess - and never leaves any incriminating evidence behind. So they've sent in an FBI profiler to help the local police get this guy. This goes nowhere, so it's a stupid waste of five minutes of movie. But they do know this: The game has begun again - reports of six missing young people come in at once. This is the big one.
Of the six, the African American, Jason (See? I did take names.) wakes up with a wound where the others have not even a scratch. He's not even curious enough to check it out and after initially complaining acts like it's not there - great acting. Not. He's also the first to die - his 'game', being afraid of surgery while awake (?!?) is to find the 'key' to defuse a bomb in 60 seconds. An x-ray display shows that, of course, it's inside him and he has to cut it out himself. Massive duh and massive rip off of Saw. He refuses and boom he's splatted.
The doublemint twins, Dylan and Cherie wind up in a room together. Cherie's fear is to be without her brother, although he's a total douchebag to the Nth degree. Both are in facing chairs with a drill on a track facing both. Both have remote controls that will stop the drill coming at their face - but it at the same time starts the one going at their sibling. So stop one, start one, stop one... that was almost imaginative. Dylan, being the douchebag is also capable of the movie flip-flop - he gallantly takes a drill to the face to save his sister. Yawn. Oh, sorry, that was supposed to be a tense scene.
In the meantime the other three are trying to find a way out. Here's where my favorite, but also movie suspense killer line comes up. When asked what she fears most, the tough girl, Kelly says (and I swear it's almost word for word for what I've always said), "If you grew up with my dad, you'd realize there's not much left to be scared of." Good on you Kelly. Unfortunately, for a movie critic like myself you've also just given away the movie motivation and probable ending. Oh well....
Princess Carlee is afraid of germs so for some reason she's gutted. Don't ask me, I didn't write it and they don't explain it. Tough guy Brandon is afraid of the dark so bright lights blind him, then send him in total darkness except for the glow of an exit sign on a door. But he also saw all the tripwires connected to guns hanging from the ceiling. Not well enough apparently because he's soon riddled with holes.
Kelly and Cherie get separated. Kelly is a tough girl and has been instructing Cherie to destroy every camera they find. That makes the psycho running the show, a man in a suit with half his face burned, go out of the control room to find them. Kelly find the control room and sees through the monitor still working that the man has now killed Cherie. Now this next part would have been a good twist IF Kelly hadn't said her totally cool but movie-killer line. Behind the control room is a bed. Tied to it is Kelly's mother.
The psycho is actually Kelly's father. Her greatest fear had been someone finding out about her 'secret'. He had tormented her and her mother so much that they literally had set fire to him while he was in bed. Fortunately for him, he was movie-tough and not only lived, but somehow got the money for these elaborate setups that he's been practicing for two years. MASSIVE DUH. As she attempts to free her mother (gasoline is dripping and broken bulbs are sparking - he wants them both to fry like he did), he comes back and they scream at each other for a couple of minutes. For some reason that made my chest tighten, but that's just my personal history, don't worry, it's not scary or anything. Because she is sooo tough, she frees her mom, and instead of them frying, manages to set the room ablaze with her father in the middle. Again.
The next day she and her mother prepare to move for the umpteenth time to start over. Kelly sees on the news how the bodies had been found - but one short. We see the detectives determining that there was a trapdoor to an underground sewer in the room the father supposedly burned again in. MASSIVE DUH AGAIN. Kelly calls for her mom, and hears a gunshot. She turns and there's her father - again. She screams. I guess now she has something to be scared of.
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