Ol’ Emma (Mhairi Calvey) is well and truly in the sinister soup! She’s been kidnapped and chucked into an abandoned bunker with a dude named Ben (Tyron Ricketts), a real shit-heel who sexually assaulted our heroine 15 years prior… along with her old school chum Jamie (Martin Kaps). Soon this gaggle finds themselves b.d. in the stalk n’ slay bag as they strive to keep alive when the psychos that abducted them begin chasing them through the wicked woods.
3 Lives has it’s ups and downs. Co-Writer (along with Wolf-Peter Arand)/Director Juliane Block presents Emma as a character shattered by the damage Ben inflicted on her, and Calvey certainly has the acting chops to make that believable…but unfortunately the situation she finds herself in is cliche and predictable for anyone that is a fan of the slasher genre. Fortunately the tension is kept relatively high and effective so the goings-on remain mostly watchable throughout.
See how I said “mostly” up yonder? Well the constant bickering between our main characters becomes pretty damn grating. I know these folks have a dark past, and trust is at a premium between them…but their yakking really grinds certain scenes to a halt, which reduces audience satisfaction with this fright flick more than it should.
And while we are on the subject of “satisfaction”; the marauding maniacs this film offers up are as bland and forgettable as a bowl of white rice. these types of films are made or broken on the strength of their antagonists, and here 3 Lives falls woefully short.
3 Lives succeeds at showing the lasting horrors of sexual violation, but stumbles giving us the horror biz goods we crave. I’d give this a lukewarm recommendation on the strength of the cast, but the story could have used less character squabbles, better villains, and overall more terror!
