Needle

NEEDLE

A competently-made but unexceptional film from 2010, Needle follows an American college student named Ben who attends school in Australia.  A lawyer delivers a curious mechanical box that belonged to Ben’s father, and Ben puzzles over the nature of the device with his circle of friends.  His estranged brother Marcus (who has found work as a photographer for the local police) turns up.  After all of his friends leave (except for his sort-of girlfriend Mary), Ben passes out in bed and discovers the next day that the mysterious box has gone missing.  Shortly thereafter, Ben’s friends begin to die in bloody and unnatural ways while the viewer is privy to the fact that a killer (whose identity remains hidden until the final fifteen minutes or so) is using the box (which has supernatural properties) to create wax voodoo dolls and pick off Ben’s inner circle.  Ben and his brother race to figure out what’s happening and recover the box. 

Needle is watchable but never becomes particularly gripping (largely due to how passive Ben remains through most of the tale).  Marcus actually takes more initiative and action than the ostensible protagonist.  Ben is a bland and stereotypical college student who drinks hard, pulls the periodic prank on a professor, and can’t work up the courage to properly ask out a girl (Mary) who clearly connects with him.  Needle features a cool premise (the voodoo box is a unique tool for a killer to use) but feels flat due to the lack of memorable and distinct characters.  It’s not awful, but there are more intriguing horror films out there.