Red Mist

With a plot that crosses I Know What You Did Last Summer with Patrick Still Lives, minus the budget of the former and the vaginal mutilation of the latter; Red Mist is familiar in almost every way but manages to entertain from beginning to end with a passable script, decent performances and some inventive kills. While it certainly will not reinvent the genre, with its archetypal characters and a consistent air of predictability, memorable moments, such as the Sarah Carter scene (you'll know it), along with some sincere tension and flinch-worthy, but not exceedingly explicit, gore, should please most fans of the genre, at least fleetingly. Originally titled the more appropriate Freakdog, Mist follows a team of med students who get drunk one night and inadvertently put the socially awkward Kenneth (Andrew Lee Potts) into a coma. Inevitably, some of the med students are keen on covering up the incident without moral quandary (Sarah Carter, Martin Compston), while others, such as Catherine (Arielle Kebbel), struggle with it. In a means of coping with her guilt, Catherine starts researching ways in which she can help Kenneth wake up from his coma, which stirs up inert psychic powers that allow him to possess and manipulate various med students in order to enact his revenge. Indeed, the "don't mess with freaks" subtext is rather glib and obvious, which is likely why the "making of" and actor interviews talk more about the casting, Belfast production, limited budget, overall vision and what attracted various actors to the project. Also included on the DVD is an extended interview with lead actress Arielle Kebbel, who discusses what it was like to shoot in Ireland and how she has always wanted to play a doctor or med student, along with a brief location featurette.