Cry Wolf

A serial killer flick without significant carnage might sound like a real non-starter, but it’s possible to give first-time director Jeff Wadlow’s boarding school thriller the benefit of the doubt by assuming it’s more interested in plot manipulation than outright blood-letting. This perhaps explains how the production won a million-dollar prize from a US auto manufacturer, but it still comes across as a cumulatively tiresome exercise in story mechanics as bored students at an exclusive Virginia academy react to the recent slaying of a local ‘townie’ by pretending their classmates are the killer’s next target, group e-mailing an invented case history as a mass scare tactic. However, when the supposed psycho returns their on-line messages and one of their number disappears, it looks like their lies might be coming worryingly true. Sundry red herrings and ever-shifting guilt make the story more Agatha Christie than Wes Craven, but as the obviously over-age cast prove exasperatingly dim-witted while trading smart-aleck dialogue, the power of suggestion takes us only so far before patience wears thin.