[Pleasant Nightmares]

Written by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen and directed by David Guy Levy, it follows the struggle of Iris (Brittany Snow), a young woman who takes on the responsibility of caring for her younger brother with bone cancer. She’s fighting just to find a minimum wage job and make ends meet, let alone find a way to help her brother survive his illness. In her desperation, she seeks the aid of a wealthy man who offers her more money than she would ever see in her lifetime, on the condition that she play, and win, a “game” in competition with others in need.

Another torture porn. I wish I had something positive to say about this movie, I really do. Unfortunately, it’s nothing more than a watered-down version of Saw. I say it’s watered-down because it lacks any creative spin on the concept, lacks any real depth of story or conflict, and invokes absolutely no intrigue or emotional involvement.

The only thing at stake, as troubling and moving as it is supposed to be, is the survival of her little brother. The kid is used as a weak plot device to make you care about this girl’s ordeal and justify her conviction. Otherwise, you are basically given no history for any of the characters in this film and no reason to care about any of them.

Even the actual torture lacks creativity. Love them or hate them, you have to admit that the Saw films had an element of creativity in their traps and the personally tailored psychological torment behind them. Each victim suffered in his or her own way unique to his or her own history, and the ultimatums felt more pressing because of it.

Here, all we really get is a room full of people taking turns like a game of truth or dare, faced with the dilemma: Would you rather mutilate yourself, mutilate your neighbor, or die for not making a choice? Electrocution. Stabbing. Cutting. Whipping. It’s really nothing special.

I’m not going to say that I am against the torture porn sub-genre on the whole; I believe it has its place if it’s executed well and has some substance behind the gore. What I am against, genre aside, is the shameless copy-and-paste of a popular movie’s basic formula with none of its nuance. It’s worse than plagiarism, because it is to say, “The only reason this movie sold is because _______. Even I can do that.”

Long story short, don’t waste your time with this one. It’s no wonder it passed under the radar, and it’s exactly the kind of laziness Hollywood needs to crawl its way out of.