The basic premise will be familiar to most horror fans, as originality isn’t exactly Crawlspace’s strong suit. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: a troupe of crack soldiers is sent to investigate/clear out a government facility. It quickly becomes apparent that said facility has been the site of shady government experiments on people. Needless to say, shit hits some form of rotary blade and chaos ensues, as the test subjects wreak bloody revenge on people who aren’t really responsible for their current predicament unless you are casting the net stupidly wide.

“So if the plot is so seemingly banal, is this even worth a watch?”, I hear you muttering to nobody in particular. The short answer is yes, yes it is. What it may lack in originality, Crawlspace more than makes up for in execution. As would be expected, the effects are pretty top notch, with the exception of a couple of regrettable uses of CGI blood, and what really stood out for me was the quality of the sound design. The sound track and effects are so well done that they contribute more than you would think possible to giving the film a real sense of tension and dread. I am well aware of how important good sound design is, but this is that rare example of good sound design improving the production value of a movie tenfold.

The direction is pretty on point as well, with the shots within the titular crawlspaces feeling genuinely claustrophobic, and a particularly nicely filmed reflection shot. Go watch it; you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Crawlspace is not without its shortcomings however. The plot and some of the more stodgy parts of the writing do combine to make it feel more like a bad video game adaptation rather than a standalone movie, albeit with far better pacing, and some actual moments of terror (I’m looking in your direction, Dead Space and other triple A ‘horror’ games), and the use of CGI blood and a solitary Wilhelm Scream early on did crack the immersion somewhat.

In spite of this, Crawlspace is a decent enough take on the horror/action/sci-fi genre that everybody knows deep down that they love, and it’s all very nicely done, if a little hollow.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars

It all starts off fairly poorly, with some exposition involving an overweight gentleman with an eye patch and some bog standard character development. I will be honest, for the first twenty minutes or so, I hated Quite A Conundrum. The main female roles, Mimi (Ramos) and Tabitha (Cline) are just so unlikeable, even down to the more-clever-than-it-thinks-it-is lines that they spew forth with admirable, if misplaced gusto. The soundtrack is just terrible, featuring a whole bunch of god-awfully cheesy R&B, and there is a reference to a ten year old Nelly song that had me cringing.

The writing is very reminiscent of Kevin Smith, and that is a double-edged sword. On the plus side, it looks very clever and witty on paper, and that can sometimes transfer into on-screen hilarity, however the viewer is also forced to listen to the nagging little voice inside their head that says “people just don’t talk like that, this is ridiculous.” It is especially grating with more than two characters, because it feels like one character having a conversation with multiple manifestations of the same writer’s split personality.

Then, around half an hour in, everything changes, and I completely understood that the previous unlikeability of every character was entirely intentional, and for that, I have to applaud the writing and direction, because even the way that some parts were shot had me wanting to brain them.

From this point on, Quite A Conundrum gets really twisty and turny, and I don’t want to spoil it, so go and see it for yourself. What I will say is that it gets incredibly dark, but by contrast, it also gets genuinely witty, and chemistry between characters that was previously not there really shines through. There is a particular exchange involving a drum kit that reminded me of some of the sharpest parts of Clerks.

Once the thriller part kicks in, it is actually really well done, with a continuing sense of tension being built up, and a real sense that anything could happen at any given moment. If I say any more I’m going to ruin it, so I will wrap up by saying that if you don’t get into Quite A Conundrum straight away, persevere and you will be richly rewarded with, while it is not without it’s faults, a gem of an indie thriller.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

All kidding aside, this movie was my third journey into Australian horror, and sat somewhere in the middle of the different ends of the spectrum that I have experienced. For the sake of context, I should say that the other two flicks were the truly awful Body Melt (featuring Neighbours’ Harold Bishop as a mad scientist) and the wonderfully creepy photoshop-em-up Lake Mungo.

6 Plots is the cautionary tale of seven students of a high school that I imagine is in a fictional suburb of Melbourne, who, after a hedonistic party of booze, drugs and bluetooth-ing, become the playthings of a sadistic maniac, who traps six of them in ironically located (that special kind of serial killer irony, where the daughter of the fire chief is covered in petrol) wooden boxes. Our villain then tasks the most brunette of the group to find and save them, all the while communicating to them via a creepy, yet poorly designed avatar. To say that the plot borrows heavily from other franchises would be something of an understatement.

The whole thing comes of like a weird collision of horror/thriller and Australian soap opera, perhaps brought about by it’s resemblance to a PG version of Saw, with a few Ramsey Street Alumni thrown in for good measure.

Before I get too hooked on bashing it though, the movie is not without its good points. The acting is, for the most part, fairly decent, and the ensemble cast has some nice chemistry, which makes the opening scenes feel natural in a sort of Dawson’s Creek-with-swearing kind of a way. The writing isn’t awful either, and for the most part flows pretty well.

The big let down for me though was this: for a horror movie, 6 Plots is just too tame. The boxes in which the kids are confined don’t look small enough to invoke a terrifying sense of claustrophobia, and what little gore there is more closely resembles CSI style aftermath than the kind of splatter that a modern horror audience would crave. There is also some really clunky commentary on social networking and internet voyeurism that is more buzzwordy than observational. It falls equally flat if viewed as a traditional thriller, as the pace is too slow, and the buildup of tension is practically non-existent. The ‘twist’ ending was also particularly weaksauce, and was pretty evident from the first scene.

It’s not a terrible movie, but could definitely have been more than it is with some tighter editing and a bit more gore. On the plus side, it’s nice to see Janae Timmins is still getting work.

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars