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‘If you wanna grill it, you gotta kill it’

Early on in Edge of Fear, the main theme sets out its stall – the notion of Karma and what you do coming back to you. It does this to such an extent that the mirrors in the film are flagged miles in advance. For example, a character saving someone from a heart attack only to be… wait for it… spared himself when he’s stabbed in the heart. It’s an intriguing idea, granted, but is enough really done with it?

Doctors Patrick and Laura Chen (Shen Lin and Zhu Zhu) save Mike Dwyer’s life (Rockmond Dunbar) when he’s brought into their OR. Spin on two years and they’re all firm friends now, the couple invited to Mike’s cabin in the woods (don’t get any ideas, this isn’t that kind of movie; for one thing the ‘cabin’ is massive, more like a home from home).

At the same time criminal Victor Novak (Heroes’ Robert Knepper) is freed from a prison bus by Jack Pryor (T2’s Robert Patrick) and his band of cut-throats, who proceed to kill everyone else on board… thereby dooming themselves, according to Victor.

The first whiff of this is when their car won’t start, forcing them to look for alternative transport. When they stumble on Mike’s place, they think they’ve hit the jackpot – little realising he has no cars there (they were dropped off by his assistant). Relieving the trio of their phones, the gangsters wait to get picked up themselves by ‘Charlie’ – and the scene is set for a tense few hours…

Part home invasion movie, part I Spit On Your Grave revenge flick and part crazy thriller, Edge of Fear does what it can with a thin plot and wafer thin characters. The actors all come across well, though some do look a bit bored, and a few of the ways the bad guys are dispatched are imaginative (poisoning whiskey, or rammed with a tractor). But ultimately the whole premise is somewhat hard to buy – especially a finale that you can see coming about halfway through. There’s just about enough tension to keep you watching, however, even if the break for two of the criminals to have sex feels at odds with this and more than a little shoehorned in for titillation. But at least it’s trying to do something different with the format…

Verdict: ‘I wanted to have a nice quiet evening!’      5/10                           

Paul Kane