The perils of modern society’s interconnectivity and obsession with sharing our lives online are exploited in this Australian thriller from director Leigh Sheehan.
A group of tech-savvy teens stream their wild party online. But when Brie (Alice Darling) wakes up, she’s all alone. A sinister smiley message tells her that her friends are each trapped in separate boxes. They’ve all got their phones, but if anyone attempts to call the police or their parents, the penalty will be deadly.
6 Plots seems to be going for a mixture of Saw and Buried for people too young to get into torture porn films but it’s distinctly lacking in intensity, partly due to its commitment to retaining its young target audience.
From the first few minutes it feels like a soap that’s decided to give its characters a nasty shock. The characters themselves have come out of the teen horror catalogue, as do the enthusiastic young cast. We also have the fact that they’re all up to date with the latest technology drilled into us endlessly during the first 20minutes, which may be important to the plot, but it’s not particularly interesting.
Things do pick up a bit once the ticking clock element is introduced and the likeable Brie is forced to take charge and marshall her friends via phone. However, Sheehan and writer Tim C Patterson obviously have no interest in things getting too scary or too dark.
In a way it’s quite refreshing to see a teen thriller with a relatively benevolent attitude, but at the same time it robs it of any tension. This drain is also helped by the fact that poor Brie is at least two steps behind the audience at every turn (where could the swimming star whose box is filling with water possibly be?) After peaking at around the halfway mark, things get increasingly dull as the film scrambles towards the finish line.
6 Plots is not without its moments but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.
