Are You Scared? - 13B

ARE YOU SCARED? (2006)

After waking up in an abandoned factory, six kidnapped teens realize they are contestants on a reality show called “Are You Scared?” Six teens who didn’t take life seriously are forced to participate in a game in which death can come at any time in director Andy Hurst’s tense horror thriller. Awakening from drug-induced stupors to find that they have been imprisoned by a sadistic psychopath, these six teenagers who are under close observations discover that they have become pawns in a particularly deadly game in which their only hope for survival is to play by the rules and pray for their life. The reality show is called “Are You Scared?” and its unfortunate contestants are kidnapped when they’re cast. After being knocked unconscious and transported to an abandoned factory, six teenagers discover that they’ve been unwittingly enrolled in a sadistic game show on which the biggest prize is surviving. Goaded by the voice of an unseen captor, the terrified young people are forced to face their biggest fears by performing grotesque tasks – or die trying.

KILL THEORY (2009)

Whilst celebrating a graduation at a secluded vacation home, a group of college students find themselves targeted by a sadistic killer who forces them to play a deadly game of killing one another in order to survive. Feast producer Chris Moore makes his feature directorial debut with this shocker concerning a group of vacationing college graduates who become the unwilling participants in a sadistic game of kill or be killed. Having just completed their finals and received their diplomas, a small group of recent college graduates decide to celebrate their accomplishment by taking a trip to a secluded cabin in the woods. Just as they’re settling in for the time of their lives, however, a violent psychopath arrives to inform them that they are now all contestants on a vicious game of survival. The rules are simple: Kill all of your friends and the last person left standing is the winner. As the reality of their grim situation slowly sinks in, the tensions ramps up and relationships between old friends start to buckle under the weight of fear. A group of college friends visit a secluded vacation home to celebrate their upcoming graduation. The fun doesn’t last long when a sadistic psychopath forces them to participate in his deadly contest. The rules are simple – in order to survive they must kill each other. As tension builds and relationships begin to crumble, they realize that only one can make it out alive. Could you trust your boyfriend? Your girlfriend? Your best friend? Only one can go home. So, who will be the last man or woman standing?

Are you capable of the unthinkable? That’s the question seven college students face when they visit a secluded vacation home to celebrate graduation. Trapped in a deadly game, they’re forced to kill one another in order to survive. Friends and couples test their trust and as the clock ticks away: Alliances form, tension escalates and hope begins to fade. Some will fight for love, others to survive, but all will change. Because deep down – we’re all killers.

An unnamed man is sitting in a psychiatrist’s office, being released from an insane asylum. His doctor, Dr. Karl Truftin recaps how the man sacrificed his three friends during a mountain climbing expedition, cutting their climbing ropes in order to save himself. Although the man insists that anyone in his situation would have made the decision to kill to survive, the doctor explains that due to good behavior and evident remorse over causing the deaths, the man is to be set free with regular psychiatric evaluations. Meanwhile, Brent is traveling to his father’s lake house with his girlfriend Amber, other couples Michael and Jennifer, Carlos and Nicole, as well as their friend Freddy. Upon arriving they are surprised to find Brent’s stepsister Alex has been living there. Brent and Alex argue, however the others convince Brent to let her stay. After settling in, Amber refers to an unspecified event that implies she and Michael were intimate at one point, however Michael brushes off the topic quickly. The group party and drink into the night until everyone goes to bed. Carlos and Nicole decide to sleep outside on the porch. Carlos, being heavily intoxicated, passes out immediately. When Nicole goes into the kitchen to get a drink, she is attacked by an unknown man.

Sometime later, Nicole’s body is thrown through a window onto Freddy who alerts the others with his screams. The group panics before noticing the word “TV” cut into Nicole’s stomach. After turning on the TV, the group views a video of Nicole being handed a loaded gun and told to shoot Carlos in order to survive. Nicole refuses and instead turns the gun on her attacker who overpowers her and slits her throat. The unseen man then explains to the group through a Walkie-Talkie that come 6am, only one member of the group should be alive they will all die. The man also explains that Nicole was given the same option as they are, kill to survive, however she failed. Collectively the group decides to barricade themselves into the house, realizing their phones do not work. Carlos decides to make a run towards the boat to retrieve a gun placed in the key box. Brent follows him and they find the boat has been sunk, but Brent is able to retrieve the gun anyway. Noticing a nearby axe, Carlos runs to get it, but is caught in a giant bear trap. Brent begins to help him, however after hearing someone approach from the trees nearby he leaves Carlos and returns to the house, telling the others that Carlos has been killed.

While Freddy begins to become hysterical over their situation, bandaged up Carlos makes it to the house. Although barely conscious, is able to tell Jennifer that Brent had left him. Jennifer manages to knock the gun out of Brent’s hand and gives it to Michael, no longer trusting Brent. The group decides they have to try and leave in the van in order to get Carlos to a hospital despite Brent’s protests and expectation that the van will be rigged to explode. Alex leaves the house and successfully brings the van to the front of the house, allowing everyone to get in. However, while driving away from the house, road spikes blow all of the tires. The unnamed man quickly shoots rigged balloons of gasoline which spill over the van before telling the group that there is no escape and they need to sacrifice one person in the next 60 seconds or they will all be burned alive. Brent pushes the wounded Carlos out of the van where he is shot in the head.

The group panics. Brent deserts Amber by running into the forest, leaving her to return to the house with Michael, Jennifer and Freddy. Alex attempts to escape on her motorbike however is nearly shot when attempting to do so, instead fleeing towards the lake. While Brent runs through the forest he is attacked by the killer, only spared due to his promise to kill someone else. Brent then attacks Alex, drowning her in the lake. He quickly returns to the house and convinces Freddy to get the gun off of Michael by lying to him saying that they could both escape on the boat. Freddy retrieves the gun from Michael but eventually shoots Brent after realizing he was lying about the boat and was going to shoot everyone. Freddy then forces Amber to leave the house before attempting to do the same to Michael and Jennifer. Michael tries to reason with the hysterical Freddy, but Brent soon stabs Freddy through the head with a fire poker, having survived being shot. Michael and Jennifer run into the basement but are then cornered by Brent. As Brent prepares to shoot them both, Amber returns and bludgeons him to death with a spade. Michael and Jennifer go back upstairs, leaving Amber in shock in the basement. Eventually she finds a gun planted by the killer in her bag and reluctantly draws it on Jennifer who has the other gun. The two girls get into an argument over Michael, with Amber confessing her love for him. Jennifer shoots Amber in the stomach, much to Michael’s shock.

Realizing it is nearly 6am and the killer is approaching the house, Michael and Jennifer escape into the basement with an unconscious Amber. In the basement they hide out and attempt to shoot the killer when he comes downstairs, however it is revealed to be Alex, having survived her attack from Brent earlier. Alex quickly dies from the gunshot wound before Jennifer turns on Michael in desperation, stabbing him in the stomach. Michael tells Jennifer he would have died for her, but before she can kill him Amber attacks Jennifer and strangles her to death. Amber crawls next to Michael, intent on staying with him until the end. As the clock chimes six and the man approaches, Michael kills himself in order to save Amber. As the man passes, Amber says she’ll never like him and though he expresses skepticism, he leaves her alive and departs from the house. The killer leaves a voice mail at the psychiatrist’s office, saying he’s proved his theory that desperate people would resort to murder and the camera pans along a photograph to reveal Brent was the doctor’s son. The killer laughs and says he’s now found closure.

B13 (YAVARUM NALAM) (2009)

Fear has a new address. Manohar, an upwardly mobile middle-class Indian moves into a new apartment – 13B on the 13^th floor with his family. From the first day in their new home, the women are hooked on to a new TV show “Sab Khairiyat”. The show is about a family eerily similar to theirs who have also just moved into a new house. As t he TV show unfolds, all the incidents that happen in the show start happening to them. Director Vikram explores the possibilities for terror when the television becomes aware of the power it holds over the average family and decides that it’s time to take control. In a world that never sleeps, the only source of relaxation for many is the household television. Previously just another appliance like the refrigerator or oven, the television of the 21^st Century is thought by many to reveal the hierarchy of the family; whoever controls the television remote controls the family. But what happens when the television becomes sentient and decides that it’s time for a change? This is what happens to Manohar and his family upon moving into their new home at 13B. Realizing to his horror that their television has stopped showing them the facts and has started showing them the things that it wants them to see. Manohar must race to save his family from becoming unfortunate victims of the digital age.

Manohar (R. Madhavan) moves into a new apartment, 13B, on the 13^th floor with his family, fulfilling his life’s biggest dream. But they encounter a series of small but strange incidents (such as milk getting spoiled), which are regarded as inauspicious by his family but shrugged off by an excited Manohar. The elevator in the apartment works for everyone in the building except Manohar, which bothers him. The women in the family get hooked onto a new TV show Yavarum Nalam (Everyone Is Well or Sab Khairiyat in Hindi). The show is about a family eerily similar to Manohar’s who have also just moved into a new house as they have. As the serial unfolds, Manohar notices that the incidents that happen in the serial are a reflection of what is happening to his family. One day Manohar finds the blind man’s dog trying to find something in the sand, Manohar stops the dog and takes it to its owner He also notices that his camera takes distorted pictures of him while he is in the apartment, but not while he is outside the apartment. Things like his sister graduating, his wife getting pregnant and later suffering a miscarriage are all also shown in the serial. Priya is saved by their longtime family friend and doctor, Dr. Balu. The rest of the family remains oblivious to the similarities and Manohar prefers it that way to avoid panic.

Things start taking a turn for the worse in the serial and Manohar becomes terrified that the same might happen to his family. He now wants to know who is behind the making of the TV show. Later that night he asks his wife about the latest episode of the serial, she reveals the same story to him. On this, Manohar digs the ground on a rainy evening and finds a diary. He then unravels a terrifying secret: The apartment they live in shared their address with a house where a family of eight (similar to Manohar’s family) was butchered back in 1977. It was the family of a TV news anchor named Chitra. On the day of Chitra’s engagement, an ardent fan (Shriram Shinde in the 13B version) of Chitra wanted to stop the engagement and failed in doing so. Disheartened, he committed suicide. Subsequently, all members of Chitra’s family were murdered with a hammer in a single day. The blame rested on the lunatic brother in the family, as he had been seen with the hammer last. The police officer investigating the case also committed suicide by hanging himself in the same house. Manohar and his policeman friend Shiva meet the madman brother Senthil, who apparently goes crazy after seeing a TV show in an asylum. They then meet Chitra’s former fiancée Ramchandar, who tried to plead for Senthil’s innocence because he got covered in blood while he hugged the bodies of his family. After researching one night, Manohar has a nightmare of the 13B murderer climbing the stairs to kill his family. When Manohar tries to climb the stairs, he always ends up on the 2^nd floor. He goes to the hall and witnesses the climax of Yavarum Nalam when they are showing the murderer’s identity: Manohar’s face is shown as the killer.

What follows is the climax: The 13B murderer is Dr. Balu (Sachin Khedekar), who sees the family members’ faces as the serial family members. It was he who killed them in the 1970s on behalf of his brother, the spurned fan and also killed the police officer who caught him red-handed. Manohar kills Dr. Balu. The story ends with Manohar living a normal life with a new dog in the family; the milk is not getting spoiled anymore. They bring Senthil home and the lift in the apartment finally works for Manohar. The next day, when Manohar uses the lift, he receives a call from Dr. Balu, who says that while the 13B family haunts the TV, he haunts Manohar’s phone. The lift falls down quickly, ending the movie.

In today’s world, the major source of relief, information and entertainment is the TV. So much so, that it has moved up from its modest position of being just another “household appliance” to actually determining the power equation in a family. It is easy to identify the hierarchy in the family depending on who controls the remote control. So, what happens when the TV realizes this power and begins to take control? What happens when instead of showing you the facts, the TV, begins to show you what it wants you to see? What happens when Manohar, to his great horror, realizes that this is exactly what is happening with his wonderful family, who has just moved into their sweet new home at 13B. Manohar’s dream condominium transforms into a house of horrors when a show on his brand new television starts depicting his demise. A series of strange events plagues Manohar’s family with a remote control hell bent on being just that – in control.