Six college students (including Texas Battle, Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Tom Payne) suddenly find themselves contestants on the fear-driven reality game show “The Task.” Stuck inside an old, supposedly haunted prison, the group suddenly becomes aware that the ghostly happenings going on inside might be a bit more deadly then they were led to believe, the show’s producer Connie (Alexandra Staden) looking on in terror as her ‘cast’ is gruesomely bumped off one by bloody one.

CRITIQUE

Once you get past the derivative nature of the idea, the After Dark Original B-horror show The Task starts our pretty decently. The central cast of contestants is pretty solid, the setting is undeniably creepy and the baddie – the prison’s former psychotic warden now walking the hallways as a ghost looking to continue his murderous ways – is a relatively scary one. Director Alex Orwell keeps things moving while writer Kenny Yakkel (Dead Air) did a moderately nice job of keeping me on my toes, the line between fictitious prank and bloody reality thin enough I was willing to go along for the ride most of the way through.

Sadly, the longer the movie goes on the less interesting it ultimately becomes, things moving forward in such a way that the central mystery separating fact from fiction isn’t anywhere near as intriguing as it should have been. The characters start dropping pretty much in the order of their cast listing, while our intrepid reality show producer Connie begins acting so stupidly I wanted to throw something at my television screen. The suspense slowly drains away and all we’re left with is the tired and cliché nature of the scenario, the movie sadly becoming nothing more than your random haunted house freak show complete with ‘twist’ ending and catastrophic denouement.

There’s not a lot more to add. I’m partial to giving movies like this one a chance, more forgiving of a lot of these B-movie chillers than most of my peers usually are. But The Task just doesn’t make it from points A to B to C intact, flashing its hold cards way too early. The cast does what they can (especially Campbell-Hughes and Staden) and a few scenes definitely had my pulse racing, but overall the final product just didn’t do anything for me, and if this were a reality show it would have been canceled long before the first episode even came close to airing.

THE VIDEO

The Task is presented in 1.78:1 Widescreen and actually looks pretty darn good for a standard definition DVD. There’s not as much digital noise as usual and color levels remain fairly consistent. I was a little bit impressed to say the least.

THE AUDIO

The Task comes with English 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Digital audio tracks with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Special features here include the extremely short featurette “The Task” Behind-the-Scenes and the film’s Original Theatrical Trailer. Also included are trailers for other After Dark Originals Husk, Prowl, Seconds Apart and Fertile Ground.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For as derivative as the concept is, The Task actually starts out pretty decently. It introduces a relatively intriguing cast of characters, a suitably creepy ghostly villain and a setting guaranteed to give the viewer at least a passing case of Goosebumps. But as the movie progresses it sadly gets less and less interesting, moving towards an anemic twist ending that had me yawning more than it did anything else.