Words: Rob DeStefano
Claustrophobia paired with an encircling wickedness can make for either a taught thriller (e.g. Panic Room or Frozen) or an inadvertent joke (e.g. P2 or Devil). It’s essentially an exploitive mode of horror. The premise usually caters to relatable hypothetical fears, which allows for the audience to loosely interact with the material, questioning what their response would be, but knowing that they are entitled to the film’s resolution. As many ideas are exhausted – Julia Roberts, begone! – 2012 takes this “imprisoned” idea to a new level of absurdity: ATM, the story of three friends stranded inside an ATM.
It’s serious, and it comes from writer Chris Sparling, the man responsible for 2010′s coffin tale Buried, a movie which had a decent idea but a vacuous execution. ATM seems ludicrous from the get-go. It’s a horrible business model for a bank to isolate its cash machines.
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