Tell Tale

TITLE: Tell Tale

RELEASE DATE: 2009

SCORE: 2.5 out of 4

This is a fairly dull, lifeless effort by Director Michael Cuesta and Writer Dave Callaham. It amounts to little more than a textbook rendition of the old "transplanted organ takes over life of transplantee" trope. Basically a man is given a heart transplant, but the donor was killed by an elaborate conspiracy and the man with the heart now is compelled to seek them out and kill them.

Seems like good fodder for a horror film, right? Except there are like four dudes and there's a ton of screen time taken up by scenes between the guy, his lady friend and some kind of daughter surrogate girl character -- maybe his actual daughter, who knows -- very little was thoroughly explained and all the dialogue was muttered to give it that "gloomy" feeling.

I have to give it points because it was stylistically shot well and the editing and everything was very professional. There are a lot of hospital shots that are well done and add to the atmosphere very nicely. The dialogue and acting were well done as well. I suppose it wasn't torture to sit through, but I thought it was rather boring and played-out.

Quick Bites

Here are some movies I've seen in the past I didn't really bother to write full reviews up for:


Book of Blood (2008) - I thought this was very weak and really had terrible pacing. The editing was very odd and the overlong ending is ridiculous. I 'm giving it a: 1.5 out of 4 


Spider (2002) - This was like a half an hour of story dragged out to more than two. This is not Cronenberg's best by far. 2 out of 4.


For Sale By Owner (2009) - I'm not sure. I vacillated between not liking this movie and thinking it was fairly ok. It was enigmatic enough to probably deserve a second viewing. 2.5 out of 4.

More new film reviews coming up soon, I promise!