Six young adults are kidnapped and forced to play cruel and fatal games for the entertainment of a sicko who watches it all on security cameras, while hoping to teach them all a lesson about life. Sound familiar? No effort is made to hide the fact that this is just a complete rip-off of Saw. The only real differences, besides a lack of quality, is that in Are You Scared? survival doesn’t seem to be possible. Kinda makes the “teaching a lesson” aspect silly, I think.

I started this one with some seriously low expectations, but right away I realized the kills and traps were truly cringe-worthy. They really go a long way toward making up for the ridiculous plot holes and dialog straight out of a late-night Skinemax softcore thriller. Really, hiring someone to improve the writing a little, and maybe injecting a sniff of originality and this could have been pretty good. It wasn’t that bad as is.

Every scene involving the cops was somewhere between bad and really fucking bad. That’s where the horrific dialog really comes out and I don’t think there was anything the cops said or did that wasn’t a complete cliché. Cutting those scenes completely would have improved this film a lot.

And several times ridiculous ideas became too distracting. For example when six young people with no connection to each other disappear, the cops instantly know the trap-dude has them. These cops are that good, fuck clues, they just know shit. Also I learned that multiple shotgun blasts at point-blank range aren’t lethal, but a pipe always is.

Interestingly, the kids are told they’re on a reality show they all applied for, and that’s the façade that, at first, gets them to participate in the traps. This was the best part of the plot and should have been leaned on a lot more instead of the whole “lets rip off Saw in every way” angle.

For example, at first one might think “no one would put up with shit like this for a reality show” or later you might think: “no one really turns to reality shows for help with dealing with serious emotional issues.” If you’re thinking that, you live in a fantasy world. Do a search for “Starvation Island” on Google to see what I mean, or watch Dr Phil, there’s nothing Americans aren’t willing to do to be on TV.

And my very last bitch about this flick is the message the trap-maker is so intent on teaching people right as they die from his un-winnable games is that a merciful death is better than a lifetime of suffering, which is how he perceives his own life. The problem is his victims aren’t in a lifetime of suffering and their deaths can hardly be called merciful.

First of all, I mostly disagree. Second of all, if he’s so fucking miserable, why not kill himself in a merciful way? All these years of suffering, and he couldn’t take a minute to kill himself with a trap? Shit, I think the message should be "better a merciful death than a lifetime of whining and blaming others for shit you brought on yourself." People are losers.

Now the good, and there is some. The kills kick ass, as do some of the traps. A couple were better than the traps in the Saw series. The twins’ trap was truly insidious, and the one involving innards was truly sick and horrible. There are so many plotlines that could have been done involving traps instead of wasting these in a movie that’s just a clone. Are You Scared wasted more potential than most B movies can even muster. Also the head chop was a work of art.

Anyway, if you’re a big Saw fan, or watch the Final Destination flicks just for the kills, you might really enjoy Are You Scared. You could do a lot worse.

5 out of 10 true tests of the bond between twins