Tormented (2009) - Synopsis
TORMENTED, a sexy, scary high school horror movie that smells like teen spirit…with a hint of rotting flesh! From classrooms and cafeterias, to school ties and pool parties, teenage traumas full of promise, pimples and panic get a terrifying makeover as the best days of your lives become your worst nightmare.
Justine Fielding (TUPPENCE MIDDLETON) is the gorgeous head girl of her plush suburban grammar school Fairview High. She has just won a place at Oxford University when In-Crowd hunk Alexis (DIMITRI LEONIDAS) asks her out on a date.
All seems perfect.... except that Alexis and his circle of friends aren’t quite as hip and glam as they seem. Underneath the clique’s ‘too cool for school veneer’ lurks a pack of vicious peer pressure tormentors who find it vastly amusing to persistently tease anyone they consider worthless losers.
Their main target Darren Mullett (CALVIN DEAN) knows what his classmates did last summer. They bullied him to death. The overweight, asthmatic nerd was so relentlessly victimized by their cruel taunts, website intimidation and ‘happy slapping’ mobile phone recordings he committed suicide.
But death is not going to stop Darren finally finding the courage to stand up for himself. With nothing left to lose, he takes murderous revenge on his former classmates in increasingly brutal, bloody and imaginative ways. And the In-Crowd soon discover to their horror there is no point reasoning with a very angry zombie ghost.
Slingshot Studios presents, in association with BBC Films and Screen West Midlands, a Forward Films/Slingshot production of TORMENTED, starring newcomer Tuppence Middleton, Dimitri Leonidas (Grange Hill), Alex Pettyfer (Alex Ryder: Operation Stormbreaker), April Pearson (Skins), Tom Hopper (Saxon), Georgia King (The Duchess), James Floyd (Holby City), Larissa Wilson, (Skins), Olly Alexander (Bright Star) and Calvin Dean. (The Last Van Helsing).
Shot in the summer of 2008 on locations in Birmingham, England, the slick teen horror is written by Stephen Prentice and marks the feature-directing debut of acclaimed shorts director Jon Wright (co-writer of the Hammer Horror Beyond the Rave). Producers are Tracy Brimm (Far From Heaven), Kate Myers (Birth), Cavan Ash and Arvind Ethan David (Sugarhouse, French Film, Faintheart). Executive producer is Joe Oppenheimer (The Edge of Love, Death Defying Acts). Associate producer is Uzma Hasan (Vanity Fair). Director of photography is Trevor Forrest (Bombil and Beatrice). Production designer is Julian Nagel (Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont). Special make-up prosthetics designer is Paul Hyett (The Cottage, The Descent: Part 2) and the CGI visual effects by Stranger.
