Train (2008)★★☆☆☆

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood today, but this did not hold my attention at all. The acting was fine, the background music wasn’t bad, and there was lots of blood and gore, but…I found myself bored through most of the movie.

I like Thora Birch usually. The Hole was a great movie because of her (and despite her terrible British accent). But as a member of an internationally recognized wrestling team? I just don’t buy it. At least they didn’t have Gloria Vostis make highly suspect small talk about her wrestling matches – I think that would have taken me out of the movie completely.

Maybe it was the weird pacing, as the action doesn’t really start until half an hour in or so. Or maybe it was the fact that I wanted to punch the wrestling coach in the face. Whatever it was, I just couldn’t get into this one. Every few minutes found me either checking the time remaining on the film or rummaging through my bag of snacks for something to eat.

This was probably meant to capitalize on the success of Hostel and similar movies, but it misses the point. It’s not enough to have scary things happen to Americans in a foreign land – you have to put some effort into crafting a watchable story, too.

I’ll grant that the semi-climactic reveal near the end of the film was well-placed and interesting…but I can’t call it a “twist” since the blurb on both Google and The Movie Database had alluded to it before I’d even seen the film. And it’s not worth watching the rest of the film to get there.