richieblac We're lead to believe that a single freak with a screwdriver can scare away and/or overpower multiple people at a time. Please. At one point, FOUR people are deathly afraid of this guy - again, armed with only a screwdriver - as he lurks around outside of the house. Absolutely absurd.I could write a better screenplay in a single night while drunk.The number of high reviews are obviously staged by friends of the crew or the crew themselves. This film follows a cliché formula from mediocre 80's B-movies. For a film beyond the 90's, that's really, really, really bad. And the twist at the end just make it worse, leaving plot holes wide open that any half-decent writer would've seen coming miles away.3/10 for decent production value, a somewhat cool villain, and the totally shocking opening - which was the only good part of the film.

Paul Andrews Frayed is set in a small town near Washington called Yellow Glenn where teenager Sara Baker (Alena Dashiell) & her friend Veronica (Tascha Smith-Floe) head out into the woods to meet up with their boyfriends & party the night away. Meanwhile Sara's father Sheriff Pat Baker (Tony Doupe) has to face up to the fact that his homicidal son Kurt is being transfered from the local mental institution to a larger one in the city, however Baker receives a call that Kurt has escaped & one security guard is dead with another one missing. The local police under Sheriff Baker begin a search but soon find a trail of dead bodies that lead them to Sheriff Baker's house where his wife & daughter are being paid a visit by his killer son...Co-written, co-produced & directed by the duo of Norbert Caoili who is also credited with the music & editing & Rob Portman who himself also gets a stunt double credit(!) this horror thriller starts out like a Halloween (1978) clone but quickly turns into a mess of ideas that never come together. The script tries to be far too clever & offers up lots of silly twists which range from predictable (the security guard not being who he claimed, I mean that foot in the bushes at the hospital grounds had to belong to someone, right?) to mildly effective (the twist about who really killed Kurt's mother was reasonable but even then though the motivation behind it was baffling, OK sure the guy is a paedophile but Kurt's mother never actually saw anything so why kill her? Why not lie? What made him think Kurt would say he had been raped by his own father yet not mention the small matter his own father murdered his mother in front of him?) to the absolutely ridiculous (the end totally pulls the rug from under the audience's feet & basically says the crap you have just sat through for almost two hours was completely made up by some nutter & none of it meant anything as it didn't actually happen & was made up) & with several of these ever increasingly annoying twists coming during the last ten minutes it becomes quite frustrating to watch & put everything together in a coherent way. The other big problem with Frayed is the pacing, at one hour & fifty minutes long it drags badly & not enough happens. The script tries to juggle teen parent problems, the relationship between the Sheriff & his new wife, the search for Kurt & a security guards wandering around looking like his dazed. None of it is very engaging & as I said it's just far too slow & uneventful.There really isn't much in the way of horror here, the body count is low & apart from Kurt's mother getting her head bashed in at the start all the kills are off-screen. Ouch. Forget about any decent blood or gore as there isn't any & there's no nudity either. The comparison's between Frayed & Halloween are there to see, a boy murdering a family member, the boy put away in a mental institute, the boy escaping & heading home to pay his old family a visit & murder a few people along the way. While Frayed ultimately goes in a different direction the two films are similar but while Halloween is a classic Frayed definitely isn't & never will be.The opening sequence shot through the point of view of a camcorder is quite effective but it's shame about the rest of the film I suppose.Filmed in Washington the IMDb says Frayed was shot in 2005 but not screened publicly until 2007 & not released on DVD until 2009. The acting is average, no-one stood out for me as being particularly good or bad.Frayed is a horror thriller that rips-off Halloween but then tries to go in it's own directions with a few film destroying twists which range from predictable to just plain horrible. I didn't like it, it's neither a slasher nor a thriller despite wanting to be both & ultimately doesn't satisfy as either.

SJinSeaTac Okay, so I feel obligated to warn people about this movie ONLY because there are so many "positive" reviews about this film.Plot: Child kills mom, gets locked up in asylum for many years, later escapes when they are going to transfer him to another institution, tries to kill everyone and his sister....Halloween, right? Wrong! MAJOR Spoilers AHEAD:If your idea of a good time is figuring out the beginning, middle, and end of a movie, see this. From the opening scene, when the kid is sitting on the bed....when you never actually SEE him beating his mother to death, you will know who did it because NO OTHER OPTION for who could have killed her besides the FATHER are introduced. Its all too convenient of a plot device.When you see "someone's" foot sticking out of the bushes near the asylum at the start of the movie, and THEN an hour later you are being told who's dead body it is, and THEN you have to watch another 20 minutes of BAD ACTING as the movie continues, as if the audience is absolutely clueless......all I can say is whatever.The director's obviously thought their double-twist at the ending was good enough to make-up for BAAAAD and laughable acting throughout this film, and a complete lack of suspense since you can see the first "twist" coming a MILE AWAY. Right from when "Gary" the security guard is in the car at the beginning and the driver says, "But, there wasn't anyone out there, I saw. I saw there wasn't anyone there". Maybe because...THERE WASN'T ANYONE OUT THERE!! And for everyone else who is thinking this looks good, the second twist reveals that it is all in the escaped son's head, that he has been lying at the edge of the road THE ENTIRE TIME, that he never killed anyone, he just "imagined" killing everyone before his pedophile cop-father kills him to silence him, later to just to head home to his real family and molest his other son....SICK.The ending is a PRANK, a GIMMICK, to make you squirm, and also tells you that everything you just watched NEVER HAPPENED. Congratulations audience, you just wasted you time watching nothing. Now child molestation is horrific, yes, and I am sure that the directors and all of their script writers (all FIVE of them) used the "life is scarier than a slasher killer" angle when selling this movie and its "ending" to the studio who financed and distributed it, but come ON! You have to sit through all of this to find out its 1) not real 2) the pedophile father gets away with it and 3) BAAAD acting.Watch "High Tension" instead, or again if you have already seen it. At least it moves along faster and doesn't completely cheat you in the end.

movieman_kev On Sara's birthday, her homicidal brother Kurt beats their mom to death with a baseball bat and is sent to a mental institution. 13 years later, he escapes and plans to hunt his sister down, who just happens to be camping in the woods with her friends. Sara & Kurt's father, who's also the small town's sheriff is also after his deranged son in this low-budget horror/thriller.One would be excused for thinking that this was some lame Halloween clone after watching the first ten minutes or so. The truth is while this film DOES share quite a bit with that aforementioned film, this movie is perfectly capable of standing on it's own to feet. The acting, while never Oscar-caliber (not that i would expect that) is still fairly well done. And I found that the film kept my interest throughout. At almost two hours, it DOES wear thin and drag a bit (the editor could have cut 15 minutes or so off). I've seen much worse movies in this genre. This is good enough for a rent at the least.Eye Candy: Alena Dashiell gets topless My Grade: C+Lionsgate DVD Extras: Commentary by Writer/Directors Norbert Caoili & Rob Portmann and writer/producer Kurt Svennungsen; 13 & a half minute Making of the film; 5 minutes on how they did the 'head bash' scene; 5 minutes on the post-production; an ad for Break.com; a trailer for this movie; and trailers for "the Last Resort", "Dead Wood", "Necessary Evil" & "Cravings"