Hopkins.  Not into the cute couple?  Howabout goth chick Harriet (Katie McGrath), or Yoshimi (Christina Chong), or wildman Sean (Martin Compston, Doomsday), whose associations sometimes dip into the morally questionable?  Finally, there's family man, Steve (Michael Jibson, The Bank Job), who has a wife and child at home and the adventurous Kim (Sarah Carter, Skinwalkers).  I only mention each of them because Wright gives each of the characters a voice here.  Circling their clique is Kenneth (Andrew Lee Potts, Return to House on Haunted Hill), a weirdo janitor with a penchant for cutting himself and taking cell phone videos of dead women in the morgue.  When the gang of students decide to rip it up at a local bar, with the aid of some pills Sean nabbed from the pharmacy, Kenneth appears, clearly obsessed with the lovely Catherine.  When he is heavily dissed by the group, Kenneth lets it drop that he has more than just necro-fun videos on the cell.  he also has one of Sean lifting the pills.  Thinking fast, the gang decides to let Kenneth join in their reindeer games, implicating him as well and enduring he doesn't drop a dime on them.  Things go awry when Kenneth seizes due to his epilepsy, and the med students prefer to let him sink into a coma rather than save him, thus eliminating their troubles.  Only Catherine seems to be tormented by the decision to dump the poor guy off at the doors of the hospital.

There are the usual gags here, in regard to the students getting picked off, and that's all done competently enough.  The production is rumored to have been financed for somewhere around $2 million, and every penny shows up on the screen.  This is a slick-looking film, if nothing else.  The cast is attractive and totally serviceable in their roles, Kebbel in particular being far better here than in the disappointing The Uninvited.  There is a bit of line-chewing, but nothing to put you off the film as a whole.  

Here's the upside of this film, which I alluded to in the opening - the movie does some interesting things, and I really enjoyed the moves it made.  For one thing, Catherine's character is clearly torn by her lack of action when Kenneth could have been properly saved, and her pursuit of science as a tool to undo the damage done is logical for her.  Even better, when things go from bad to worse, she doesn't stupidly try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but instead immediately recognizes the monster she has created and does her best to convince the others of the danger she has put them in.  Likewise, the other characters react naturally, with the possible exception of a moment with Dr. Harris which doesn't last long enough to drag the proceedings down.  

Suffering her crisis of conscience, Catherine monitors Kenneth's state under the eye of the questionable Dr. Harris (Stephen Dillane), who is rumored to have erred on the side of progress when conducting test studies.  When Harris tells Cat that Kenneth is probably due for an old-fashioned plug-pull if he doesn't begin responding in some manner, Catherine gets creative and finds some experimental drugs that could bring Kenneth back from the darkness.  Instead of popping up in bed with a  thank you, Kenneth remains unconscious, but is now able to go on spirit walks where he can inhabit the bodies of unsuspecting hosts who carry out his revenge on the students who placed him in this comatose state.

There are the usual gags here, in regard to the students

Ask any true horror fan and they will tell you that different goes a long way.  Sure, it's nice to return to the comfortable world of the slasher, where you know from the beginning who's going to get it and when, if not how, or the old monster movie, where you can bet your bottom dollar that someone, sometime, is going to call the President.  But horror is about the exploration of new fears, or, at least, old fears in a new way.  It is in that spirit that I present to you Red Mist, aka Freakdog.

Director Paddy Breathnach made a bit of a splash previously with the film Shrooms, which presented the slasher in a slightly new way, and managed to slip in some genuinely creepy visuals along the way.  First time screenwriter Spence Wright penned the twisting screenplay, and I look forward to his next effort.  Though the film is set in the United States, it was shot entirely in Ireland, and Breathnach does a fine job of doubling the European locale for the States.  Viewers may also recognize Arielle Kebbel from The Uninvited, wherein she played the role of Alex.

But enough of the background... what's this all about?  Red Mist begins with a brief introduction to medical students who are coming to the end of their stay at their teaching school, and now prepare to move on to bigger and better things.  There's Catherine (Kebbel), looking to make a difference with her life, who has a thing for Jake (Alex Wyndham), recently offered a position at Johns

That's what I enjoyed about this movie, and why I consider it one of the best horror films released so far this year.  The characters are flawed, and when their mistakes are compounded, they react as they should.  The creepy use of the nose bleed as the indication of possession worked for me, too, leading to some nice turns at the conclusion.  Breathnach showed promise with Shrooms and with Red Mist he puts together a solidly entertaining horror film that never talks down to the audience and manages some moral ambiguity in the character of Catherine, successfully realized by Kebbel.  I only hope that the film gets seen and appreciated in a manner which will allow Breathnach to continue to work in the genre.  With enough gore to keep the 'hounds satisfied and its smart character turns, Red Mist is one of the first must-see films for genre fans this year.

for cutting himself and taking cell phone videos of dead women in the morgue.  When the gang of students decide to rip it up at a local bar, with the aid of some pills Sean nabbed from the pharmacy, Kenneth appears, clearly obsessed with the lovely Catherine.  When he is heavily dissed by the group, Kenneth lets it drop that he has more than just necro-fun videos on the cell.  he also has one of Sean lifting the pills.  Thinking fast, the gang decides to let Kenneth join in their reindeer games, implicating him as well and enduring he doesn't drop a dime on them.  Things go awry when Kenneth seizes due to his epilepsy, and the med students prefer to let him sink into a coma rather than save him, thus eliminating their troubles.  Only Catherine seems to be tormented by the decision to dump the poor guy off at the doors of the hospital.

Instead of popping up in bed with a  thank you, Kenneth remains unconscious, but is now able to go on spirit walks where he can inhabit the bodies of unsuspecting hosts who carry out his revenge on the students who placed him in this comatose state.