Reviewed by Melissa Garza
A commonality shared by many horror productions is a bullied lead character seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Trick or Treat, Slaughter High, and Carrie are a few fun examples. Even the majority of the Friday the 13th series follows Jason misguidedly hunting camp counselors for those that allowed him to drown as a child.
Red Mist fits into a similar mold. Kenneth (Andrew Lee Potts) is a shy young hospital employee with a clear disability which contributes to him acting awkward and not understanding appropriate conversations to have in public. Though no ailment aside from epilepsy is disclosed one may guess he suffers from a form of autism.
Kenneth has a crush on Catherine (Arielle Kebbel) a medical student who though isn’t cruel to him, doesn’t stop her other classmates who are. It is obvious she has no real interest in him but does feel pity.
One night at a local bar, Kenneth walks in and joins the group and offers to take Catherine home. Everyone in the group begins harassing him until he snaps and discloses he has Sean (Martin Compston) on camera taking drugs from the facility. As the hospital has a zero tolerance for abuse, the group quickly pretends to be his friend. They coax him to drink alcohol which unbeknownst to him was drugged. Catherine tells him not to drink it but doesn’t force him to stop either. He takes the whole thing down and then has an epileptic fit. Quickly, the med students decide that his trachea needs to be opened. Catherine attempts to get something for the incision but Sean and the rest of the crew stops her. They decide that they can’t help him without getting in trouble. Instead, they drive to the hospital, push him out in the roadway in front of the entrance and drive off.
The next day they are told he is in a deep coma. Catherine decides it’s time to go to the police but the rest refuses. She begins to look up medications that could bring him out of the coma as the clock winds down to a time when the doctors are prepared to pull the plug. She tells lies and convinces her way into his room and into obtaining the meds that she gives him. At first, they are too much for his heart and he goes into cardiac arrest. She uses the defibrillator to bring him back from the edge of death.
As he slowly improves while still unconscious, the group begins to die off. One after another, it appears that Kenneth’s mind is able to control the body of others and murders them. Catherine attempts to stop the killings unsuccessfully.
The movie has a twist ending and though elements of it are predictable, there are questions left unanswered. Otherwise, the movie is most certainly watchable if not spectacular. It is a much better version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, but not quite on par with something like Dark Night of the Scarecrow.
I was happy to see that Arielle Kebbel has been in quite a few mainstream movies. I first saw her in one of my favorite episodes of Law and Order SVU entitled mean. It followed three preppy blonde girls who terrorized their school and murdered their friend simply to teach her a lesson. Though the defense attorneys attempted to paint the girls as innocent, they were shown to be unremorseful when caught wearing the class ring of the victim and sharing the bloody clothes she was butchered in. That’s on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu – Season 5 episode 17. It’s a must-watch and even then I knew Kebbel had the talent to make it far.
Overall Red Mist was an interesting movie with solid acting and a fast enough pace to keep the viewer captivated.
Scared Stiff Rating: 6.5/10