Won Best Picture at Chicago Horror Fest!
Jym Cherry | Wheaton, IL United States | 09/30/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"I saw iMurders at the Chicago Horror festival where some of the cast and crew was in attendance and director Robbie Bryan was awarded the best feature length picture of the festival.
iMurders is about seven friends who are members of a chat room on FaceSpace, a combination of Facebook and Myspace, one of their number is a Hollywood special effects artist with a flare for the theatrical and every month he invents a new game for them to play. When they start playing his latest game, members of the chatroom start turning up dead, and in gruesome ways. While none of the murders is especially explicit there is a fair amount of gore but most of the shock is supplied by quick edits and what you think you may see. I don't think it will disappoint enthusiasts of the genre.
The casting is also outstanding. William Forsthye stars and his voice and his presence on screen is a sinister menace. Another casting coup is Charles Durning with a small role as a psychiatrist. And Tony Todd of Candyman fame extends his horror credentials here, but not as the murderer (that would be too obvious!) plays FBI agent Washington, who is trying to solve the mystery before the entire chatroom is murdered."
ILiked it!
Matt | Denver, NC | 10/16/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"iMurders is a film about a small group of cyber-friends that meet-up once a week for an online chat. In their voice/video/text chats, the host (a special effects artist) chooses a game to play that lasts all month long. The winner of the final round gets a prize from the host's memorabilia collection.
But being iMurders, things obviously go a lot further than that premise. The month's game is supposed to be a Survivor style game, in which chat members are "knocked off" one by one for saying the pre-determined code word. However, the host of this game is very quickly incapacitated, and the self-ordained replacement host decides the new rules of staying alive in this game.
This film struck me with the number of character actors present... it runs the gamut from Tony Todd and Frank Grillo to the wonderful Gabrielle Anwar. However, even though those names get first billing, the spotlight here is placed on the less recognizable actors, such as Terri Colombino (the lead in iMurders).
Ironically, Colombino bears a striking resemblance to Diane Lane, star of the similarly-themed (if much worse film) Untraceable.
So, with all of these familiar actors finally getting their due, does the film do them justice? For the most part, it actually does! The plot is very interesting, and more interweaving than it seems to be in the first hour of the movie. There haven't been many good movies made about the dangers of "cyber-friends" that you've never met in person. And while the line-writing struggles to express any character's knowledge of the internet (multiple characters stiffly insert the word "computer" in front of other technology-based words, just in case you don't know what a chat room or keyboard is), ultimately the plot matters more than the believability.
By the end, you only have so many options for who the chat room killer may be, and the reveal came way out of left field. It doesn't explain everything in the end though, which leaves you hanging with some plot gaps (such as the FBI's immediate knowledge of the chat room... the FBI didn't even know how to stop 9/11 from happening, so you can't tell me they caught on to the chat room the second its visitors started becoming victims), but I can forgive some things ultimately because the rest of the movie makes up for it easily."
CHATROOM KILLER
Michael Butts | Martinsburg, WV USA | 11/08/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"THIS IS REALLY A GUILTY PLEASURE. THE PLOT FOCUSES ON THE GRISLY MURDERS OF SEVERAL MEMBERS OF A CHAT LINE. THERE ARE SO MANY PLOTS GOING ON YOU MIGHT GET DIZZY. SOME GOOD ACTORS,,WILLIAM FORSYTHE, CHARLES DURNING, MARGARET COLIN, TONY TODD AND GABRIELLE ANWAR TRY HARD BUT CAN'T OVERCOME SOME OF THE OTHERS, ESPECIALLY BROOKE LEWIS AS THE FEISTY FBI AGENT WHO IS REALLY BAD.
I PICKED THE KILLER EARLY ON, BUT IT HELD MY INTEREST OVERALL."