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Stars: Jack Kane, Sophie Jane Oliver, Zander Emlano, Zak Sutcliffe, Molly Dew, Terence Anderson, David Keyes, Andrei Claude

Director: Alessio Liguori

A teens-in-danger horror movie that has familiar elements slapped together in random fashion with no regard to logic. Explanations are non-existent since it is merely the writer and director's intent to manufacture scenes that will hopefully be creepy or scary, an aim not helped by allowing much of the film to be shot in semi-darkness.

Five UK teens are in a coach (why isn't it full?), bored and bickering behind their long-suffering driver (Anderson) as it rolls through both flat and wooded parts of an unnamed country (filming was done in Lazio, Italy). Their destination is never clear.

Standard teen types here include the quiet, sturdy 'hero' (Kane), his putative gf (Oliver), the rebel (Sutcliffe), the twitchy fat boy along for fun (Emlano) and the bespectacled swot (Dew).

Finding the road blocked by fallen branches (an obstacle which looks as though six people could comfortably move), the coach turns off on to a side road, eventually coming to a lighted tunnel where it inexplicably stops. Taken hostage by a psycho prison escapee who happens to be around, the kids are soon in far more deadly danger...

It's tough to work out whether there are one, two or three ensuing monsters, or if there are creatures here of different kinds encountered by the teens as they flee into passages within the tunnel, although how such monsters could survive (at least, without munching up the occasional coach of schoolkids) in such confined surroundings is just another of the plot's unsolved problems.

Skulking around, they slaver away and make the kind of throaty noises these movie monsters make without rustling up much in the way of scares beyond our initial repulsion. Performances from the largely inexperienced young cast are just about passable. But at least it is short.

Available on digital platforms from 29 March

David Quinlan

Italy/UK 2018. UK Distributor: Parkland Entertainment. Colour (unspecified).
81 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 23 Mar 2021