Shadow (2009)

(On Cable TV, September 2021) The point of a late-movie twist is hopefully to get the audience gasping, reconsidering everything in light of that revelation and ending on a high note. Of course, that presupposes that the audience is invested in the film at that point. If that’s not true, no number of earth-shattering revelations will make any difference — in fact, the extra plot curlicues may simply further alienate the audience. So it is that by the time Shadow attempts its concluding twist, it not only falls flat — it makes the film even worse than it was. The plot gets going in a very familiar fashion, as an Iraqi veteran on a biking holiday encounters a young woman and then falls prey to a serial killer with a penchant for torture. At that point, though, we’re firmly into one of my least favourite genres: torture horror. Much of the rest of Shadow is a waiting game until the final revelation, which doesn’t work because it just drags on and on without a point for far too long. It’s a measure of how much Shadow has collapsed by this point that a last-second sting meant to make everyone scream is greeted by a predicted shrug. If I rake my brain trying to find something nice to say about the result, only three things come to mind: the cinematography of the mountain biking scenes is nice, Karina Testa is very cute as the female lead, and Nuot Arquint is quite effective physically as the villain. But the compliments stop there, because otherwise writer-director Federico Zampaglione manages to mix the worst elements of torture horror with dream twists and xenophobic travel thrillers. Shadow is predictable except when it’s not, and then stupid when it reaches for something else. There are some far better horror films out there, even in its low-budget class.