An intriguing hook, a strong cast and a reliable director is all the ingredients needed to make a decent horror. Sadly despite all three, Death Of Me is a misfire that will have many of you, yawning with boredom.

So what went wrong here then?

With Darren Lynn Bousman behind the camera, the guy who has made some pretty good SAW flicks and with Maggie Q and Liam Hemsworth leading the way, despite its straight to streaming offering, many fans going into this horror tale will be quietly confident that they will at least get something watchable, especially as new horror entries are pretty scarce over the last few months.

We have a cool concept to get us pumped up for a jolly freaky ride as Christine (Q) and Neil (Hemsworth) wake up in their hotel room, with no recollection of last nights events, apart from a trashed room and a real bad headache.

To makes things more spooky, there is a video on their mobile phone that clearly shows Neil with his hands around Christine’s neck before a shuddering snap, in which its quite clear that he has killed the woman he loves. But if that is the case, how is she alive now and sitting there watching these events playback and what is it with this brewing storm that has the locals of the island, behaving erratically?

By now, you’ll probably be hooked and curious to see where this intriguing set-up takes us, but sadly from the moment we have this wonderful hook, the film collapses under its own ambition, with a bore numbing storyline that will have you more frustrated than excited and fighting off the urge to reach for the off button, long before you’ll get the necessary answers.

For its fast pace and quick running time, Death Of Me at times reminded me of a bad episode of LOST, where we have all these questions thrown to us, get to a scene where it looks like we’ll get some answers, only for it to end up being ambiguous, while we move to the next scene that offers the same routine.

Surprisingly, for a film relying on mystery and suspense, Bousman can not help but to fall back onto his old background by offering up some real gory moments that will no doubt thrill the gore hounds but for the sake of the plot and the atmosphere its trying to build, looks so out of place and comes across more of a pointless and tedious addition.

For a simple hook, the plot gets bogged down way too much by its own mythology and cheap dreamlike visions and when we finally get to the reveal of what is happening and why, you can not help but shrug your shoulders and not exactly be blown away by it all.

Even then as we reach the finale and we expect to start to get excited by the climatic finish (sorry, it hardly registers on the Richter Scale) there are so many glaring plot holes that instead of paying attention to all the nonsense unfolding, you’ll be distracted by your own brain that will be screaming at you with the words ” THIS DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!!!“

For the quality of its leading stars and also the man at the helm, you the viewer deserve so much better, but saying that, so do all those involved.

1 HATCHET OUT OF 5