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Horsemen
2009; directed by Jonas Akerlund

In this straight-to-DVD release, Dennis Quaid plays a detective named Aiden Breslin investigating a series of serial killings in which a young woman, Kristen (Zhang Ziyi), is involved. The picture initially holds some promise, and delivers some decently shocking scenes with a good level of gore. But, unfortunately, the film-makers can't quite put together how to actually finish the movie, and the viewer is left scratching their head as a result.

The serial killings are initially discovered via a tray of teeth left in the middle of a frozen lake, and things only get stranger after that. Combining S&M suspension apparatus and Biblical symbolism, the choosing of targets by the murderer seems to be totally random. Furthermore, Breslin is thrown a curve ball when Kristen (the daughter of one of the victims) hands over a fetus in a ziploc bag and confesses to being one of the "horsemen", a group of people dedicated to bringing about the apocalypse. With the clock ticking until the next victim is slaughtered, Breslin must try to find out the identities of the other horsemen before it's too late.

Former music video director Jonas Akerlund makes his feature debut with this film, and at first, it looks like he's well up to making the transition. As could be expected from a former video director, Horsemen is very stylish and looks great. More importantly, Akerlund gets good performances out of his leads. Of course, solid work is par for the course for a veteran like Dennis Quaid, but most fans will probably be surprised with Zhang Ziyi's work here. In one of her few English-language roles, she creates a suitably creepy character that only disappoints because she isn't involved in the movie nearly enough.

And that brings up Horsemen's big problem. There's never really any explanation as to why Kristen, and the horsemen as a whole, are doing the things they're doing. Well, okay, actually there is one given near the end, but it's so weak and transparent -- nearly insulting to the viewer -- that it comes off as really no explanation at all. And that's a shame, because for the majority of its' running time, Horsemen has the makings of a very solid thriller in the vein of Seven. But when such a janky finale is seemingly casually tossed as an aside to the viewer, it derails the proceeding scenes, and no matter how good they were, it can't save the movie for coming off as just another shlocky suspense picture with a cheap twist ending tacked on to try to make the movie seem more important than it is.

RATING: 5

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