Chain Letter (2010)

A high school student receives a chain letter via email which states he needs to pass it on within twenty four hours or die. So he sends it to his friends. Some of them pass it on, while others promptly delete it. Too bad because it's from a serial killer who uses technology to track whether they have forwarded it, and if not, he kills them using chains (get it, chains?)

The students are all in the same history class and their history teacher is anti-technology. He believes it is all consuming and there is no privacy anymore. So he uses a device to block cell phone signals for up to fifty yards so the kids can't use their phones during his class. You'd think this would foreshadow something, but it doesn't come up again.

One of the kids figures out what is going on and contacts the detective on the case. The detective goes off to look for the killer in an abandoned factory without any back up or telling anyone exactly where he'll be.

The biggest problem with this movie is that various clues are thrown out as to who the killer is, but there is never any real explanation. The movie just sort of stops. There is talk of an anti-technology cult who may be using technology to kill, and a local man wounded in the war whose families factory closed due to the economy. Are they working together? If so, how did they team up, and why would the local man want to kill innocent teenagers? Is the history teacher part of the anti-technology cult? And who was the guy who showed up at the police station pretending to be the profiler? None of this is ever explained.

Also the motives for the killings is suspect. Usually horror movies kill kids because they are callous jerks, go places they shouldn't go, commit crimes, or have sex. But there is no real reason for these kids to die. We dont' really know anything about them, but they aren't shown doing anything wrong.

The movie is book ended by the same footage of a couple leaving their house and their kid being chained behind their cars. Putting it at the beginning just causes confusion for the viewer. There is no reason to show this at the beginning as it hasn't happened yet. It makes no sense within the context of what is going on.