Death Sentence (2007)
Directed by James Wan
Nick Hume is a mild-mannered executive with a perfect life, until one gruesome night he witnesses something that changes him forever. Transformed by grief, Hume eventually comes to the disturbing conclusion that no length is too great when protecting his family.
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What critics compared Death Sentence to
"Dead Silence," about a malevolent ventriloquist's dummy, was an amusing homage to the cheesy matinee thrillers of yesteryear, and "Death Sentence" culminates in a highly accurate re-creation of "Taxi Driver."
Perhaps it’s supposed to resonate the same way that Travis Bickel’s bloody finger did in Taxi Driver, but Wan isn’t out to make some metaphysical point.
That's Violent with a capitol "V." Rhyme that with "T," and that stands for "Taxi Driver," a movie that has nothing to do with "Death Sentence" except a graphic and gory ending sequence that the new movie follows nearly shot for shot.
It all ends (blessedly) with a rip off of Scorsese’s magnificent Taxi Driver.
Then, when the tragedy occurs, he becomes the equivalent of Robert De Niro's Mohawk-cut avenger in "Taxi Driver."
With a title whose clumsy brutality echoes a Steven Seagal film, Death Sentence is a roiling nightmare of Straw Dogs meets Taxi Driver at the Death Wish corral, and it may be the most depressing action movie ever made.
With a title whose clumsy brutality echoes a Steven Seagal film, Death Sentence is a roiling nightmare of Straw Dogs meets Taxi Driver at the Death Wish corral, and it may be the most depressing action movie ever made.
He cares for a mother (Judith Roberts, "Death Sentence") slipping into dementia and makes his living rescuing young women from the sex trade, but his latest job retrieving the 13 year-old daughter of Senator Albert Votto (Alex Mannette, "We Need to Talk About Kevin") may cost him everything in "You Were Never Really Here."
James Wan is the architect of Saw and The Conjuring Universe, both of which are multi-billion dollar horror properties, while he’s also been involved as a director, writer or executive producer on Dead Silence , Death Sentence , the Insidious series, Demonic and Lights Out .
A last act where, as in the nervous Death Sentence , the director assumes all the excess that his scenario offers him.
From Death Sentence to even Furious 7 , Malignant feature scares and thrills that’ll entertain a wide array of people.
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Instead, he is just hurriedly jerked around from one elaborate action scene to the next, none of which are staged with the kind of flair that director James Wan has demonstrated in the past in films ranging from “Death Sentence” (a terrible movie with a fight sequence set in a multi-level parking garage practically worth the price of admission) to the cheerfully over-the-top “Furious 7.” The latter managed to create scenes that were both technically astounding and enormously entertaining to watch so it isn’t that he doesn’t know how to work on a canvas this size.
While writer-director James Wan has proven himself one of the sharpest minds in horror, his two detours outside the genre (little-seen 2007 thriller “Death Sentence” and 2015 blockbuster “ Furious 7 ”) have been stilted at best, suggesting a real discomfort out of his wheelhouse.
Four years after the embarrassing double whammy of “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence” (the latter Mr. Whannell did not pen and only starred in), the two finally redeem themselves with the respectable “Insidious.”
“Insidious” marks a return to the big screen for director James Wan, who debuted in 2004 with the original “Saw” (yep, he’s the one to blame), only to see that success wither away after two follow-up stinkers in the form of 2007’s “Dead Silence” and “Death Sentence.”
Though their continued partnership has yielded mixed results, Wan and Whannell do not lack commercial savvy, drawing heavily on past triumphs—Universal horror for Dead Silence, down-and-dirty ’70s exploitation thrillers for Death Sentence—while also keeping an eye on where genre films are headed.
His 2007 thrillers “Death Sentence” and “Dead Silence” failed to impress, so he rejoined “Saw” writer/actor Leigh Whannell in this formulaic, clichéd venture into the spiritual world that evokes memories of the far-better “Poltergeist” (1982).
Written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan, the fiendish team that brought us Saw and the lesser known but grisly Death Sentence, Insidious is low on gore, preferring to creep up on you from behind than slap you in the face with a blood-drenched hand.
Having broken out as the director of “Saw,” Wan long ago made his bones in horror, but has since resisted being shackled to the “torture porn” subgenre he helped invent, directing films such as the hard-edged revenge thriller “Death Sentence.”