Review: 6 Plots (2012)

An Australian horror feature from director Leigh Sheehan, 6 Plots has a decent enough concept but unfortunately falls down in its execution, coming across a little like a poor man’s My Little Eye.

Six techno-savvy teenagers decide to have a party and stream it over the internet, however this backfires for them and they end up trapped in wooden boxes and killed off one by one for the world to see.

Whilst the focus on the proliferation of communication technology is undoubtedly a current issue and an interesting one at that, it’s handled badly here. The majority of the English speaking world is aware that teenagers are technophiles and comfortable with any new technology thrown at them. Why then does the script of 6 Plots demand that certain characters only ever talk in techno jargon? It’s unconvincing, over the top and ends up just damn right irritating.

The problems don’t end there, whilst the teenage cast won’t win any acting awards they all deliver decent enough performances in line with this type of genre piece. The adult actors however seem to have all walked off of failed soap opera auditions and would struggle even on the set of Home and Away – many of them are out-acted by the inexperienced teenagers.

“But it’s a horror film!” I hear you cry so does any of that matter? Well yes, it does. The death scenes are at least creative and fairly well thought out. There is just too much focus on the underdeveloped drama and not enough on the genre scenes to carry the weaker elements of the film and turn this into something entertaining. A nice idea that isn’t very well implemented unfortunately makes 6 Plots hard to recommend.