DVDs in Review

The Ungodly

Title: The Ungodly (2007)

Release date: August 10 2009

Certificate: 18

Format: DVD

DVD RRP: £15.99

Rating: 3/5

Wes Bentley seems to play lonely, disturbed and brooding young men rather well and like his work in 'American Beauty' and the underrated horror flick 'P2', he holds a certain amount of eerie charisma in 'The Ungodly'.

Here Bentley plays a filmmaker who inadvertently records a serial killer's murder, sending them both into an increasingly twisted (and somewhat preposterous) spiral of self-destruction.

This idea of following a serial killer to better understand your own motives in life is a brilliantly fascinating subject, recently tackled in 'Mr Brooks' with Kevin Costner as the killer, Dane Cook as the geeky man blackmailing him and, in a delicious twist, William Hurt as the killer's alter ego consistently whispering temptations for him to kill again.

'The Ungodly' has no such gimmicks but it doesn't fill in the gaps in the script either. Both men are in danger of each other and society has outcast them both, oddly pairing them together but it doesn't seem to gel. It's hard to say why.

Perhaps it's the two opposing leads. Bentley is like Joaquin Phoenix - intense, inverted, implosive. Mark Borkowski (who, along with playing the killer, also co-wrote the script) is intense in a more explosive and expressive manner. 'The Ungodly' doesn't play off these contrasts. Instead, its unsteady hand just makes the collaboration seem all that more unlikely.

There's a good, solid film lurking under the surface here and it certainly pulls no punches in terms of depraved, visceral content but it lacks a heart and soul - two components that are always more intriguing than the deeds of the characters.