Sharp comedy and blunt violence make awkward but effective classmates in director Jon Wright's cheap and cheerful high-school horror.
You can't judge a film by its title sequence - if you could, Watchmen would be hailed as a work of genius - but they can be a decent indication of how much the filmmakers care about what's to come, particularly when imagination is more plentiful than budget. Scrawled on a toilet door in compass point, lippy and Tippex alongside dyslexic obscenities and distended genitalia, Tormented's credits announce a film that's earthy, filthy, funny and direct. Unlike Watchmen, what follows fulfils these scratchy promises with aplomb. A cut-price, Carry On-ish Carrie with less menstrual anguish and dress-up montages, Tormented depicts school as screaming bloody hell for most of the pupils. Fatties, fitties, goths, jocks, prefects - even the staff - are locked in an unholy and unguessable Darwinian battle for precedence, where survival means keeping your head down or, more likely, kicking downwards. At the funeral of poor Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean), a tubby Norman-no-mates who topped himself because of bullying, we meet the various factions. Headgirl Justine (Tuppence Middleton), the "Princess Diana of this dump", is a good-natured goody-two-shoes giving a less-than-heartfelt eulogy for a boy she barely remembers. Outside, Patrick Bateman-in-the-making Bradley (Alex Pettyfer) and his bitchy crew (including, appropriately enough, 'Skins' stars April Pearson and Larissa Wilson) plan a party, while Nasser (James Floyd) and the emo kids ponder death with guy-linered glee. We also meet the smarmy headmaster (Peter Amory) and brutal games teacher (Geoff Bell) who seem to be taking their cues from If.... and / Kes respectively. In short, this has the feel of a genuine community; the secondary characters as memorably inked in as the stick figures on that toilet door.
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