The Deaths of Ian Stone

It's always frustrating when a film starts off with a promising idea and fails to make the most of it. Ian Stone (Mike Vogel) is a hockey player who encounters a body slumped at a level crossing one night while driving home from a game. When he gets out of his car to help, he finds himself being attacked by a nightmarish creature and forced into the path of a train. He dies, but moments later we see him jolt awake at his desk, apparently unharmed, Unfortunately for Ian, he's not dreaming but rather being pursued through a series of parallel universes by a pack of sinister beings who kill him again every day. In each life, there are a couple of familiar faces: a woman, Jenny (Christina Cole), and a man (Michael Feast) who seems to know what is happening to Ian. Visually, the film is a great success, despite a serious potential pitfall in the need to create convincing monsters on a relatively low budget. They get a lot of screen time, but thankfully look genuinely scary. The London locations, especially the Tube, are also used to good effect. Sadly the film fails to deliver in other areas. The tension generated by the set-up is squandered through patchy pacing, and the characters, who should be dropping tantalising hints of a riveting back story, drift away from the audience into a series of horror movie clichés instead.
estimson@thenational.ae