A prison bus with over a dozen criminals on board has an accident and rams another car, in which Dr. Douglas Madsen was on his way home. Most of the prisoners die. Four of them survive, one of them severely injured. After having killed all the guards, they head for the woods. They take Dr. Douglas Madsen hostage. Suddenly a huge house appears in the middle of the woods. The leader of the group, Arthur, emphasizes that he will kill Douglas and every single member of the "family" if his wounded brother would die. Meanwhile some members of the family show strange behavior, and very soon mayhem breaks loose.
Some movies are hard to enjoy, no matter how much we try to overlook the flaws. I simply couldn't concentrate on the dialogues, which is already a big shame, considering that we're in the 21st century and movies in this day and age are not silent anymore. I know most of the cast members were German and they were speaking in a foreign language, but frankly, I don't think that is the audience's fault. So why should we pay for the consequences and put up with these extremely irritating thick accents?, I'll never know. American actor Christopher Kriesa, performing Dr. Douglas Madsen, was perhaps the only decent or at least mildly tolerable character. The others were simply pitiful, especially because of that fictional and laughable form of an antique English dialect, spoken by this group of weirdos who live in a cottage in the middle of the woods. Perhaps this so-called ancient form of English was just a way to cover the fact that the actors weren't English speakers, but the results turn out to be pretty bad anyway. Concerning the plot, I don't know if it is too weak or not, maybe it is, but that is not nearly as blameworthy as the fact that the same story happens twice. Hard to believe as it is, it's real. The exact same story occurs twice in each half of the movie, only with different characters, except for Dr. Douglas Madsen who appears both times. It seems like the writers were desperately trying to fill one hour and a half and they run out of ideas when they finished the first half of the script. It's somewhat hilarious, come to think of it. It's like watching a new horror movie and then the quick remake or something of that sort.
I hate being harsh with my reviews, because regardless of how much I can like or dislike a film, there's always a noble effort coming from a director, the cast members and everyone involved in a movie. Perhaps "Chain Reaction" can be appreciated for its little things like the unpretentious moments of plain gore that avoid the cheap CGI for latex and Korn Flakes. Frankly, I didn't enjoy the movie very much, but I'm sure gore worshipers are going to find it bearable on the whole.
