Scared is a movie that really caught me by surprise. Once again I went in with incredibly low expectations and came out pleased by how I spent the last hour-and-a-half of my time. The premise isn't going to win any awards, but slasher flicks are usually pretty thin in the story department anyway --

We follow a group of students on a class trip, who decide to take a detour from the rest of their class and take their bus into a more adventurous area in the jungle. Lead by some random stranger (whom I'm sure means them no harm!), the students reach a dubious wooden bridge, which naturally gives out when the bus attempts to cross it (dumbasses). This now leaves more than half the students dead and the rest attempting to survive the damp jungle alone. To make matters worse, there's a hooded killer stalking and taking them out one by one through various traps spread out in the jungle.

The strongest aspect this flick offers is definitely the cool gory deaths. After the dubious first 20-minutes, the action and pacing picks up and stays that way until the last bits of the flick. However, if it weren't for the deaths this would've just been your standard ho-hum slasher fair, but thankfully Thailand is up-to-speed when it comes to gory deaths and practical effects. Once the bus driver gets a log straight through the head, it pretty much sets the tone for what we can expect with the rest of the flick.

Of course, typical of the sub-genre, we're witness to quite a few plot-holes and a ridiculous climax. It seems as though the filmmakers didn't quite know how to end the movie, so they just threw a bunch of different twists at us. The killer didn't exactly come as a surprise for me, and I'm sure any compitent genre fan can guess who it is early on. If you look passed some of the plot-holes and accept it as a fun gory slasher then you'll probably end up enjoying it as I did.

Despite the plot-holes and dubious first bits, Scared turned out to be a fun gory slasher. The deaths were surprisingly brutal and creative, which is really the only reason for watching this movie. Worth a check if you want a no-brainer gory Asian slasher flick.