ATM (2012)

For those of you who have never heard of this (which I'm assuming is basically everyone), ATM is one of a large number of claustrophobic horror movies exploiting the idea that a minimal number of actors can be filmed in a single location for a hell of a lot less money than it costs to make a standard movie. In this case, the location is (spoiler alert) an ATM in an empty parking lot right before Christmas.

Speaking of spoiler alerts, there's very little here to discuss that doesn't reveal crucial details about the plot and resolution, so if you're a fan of being bored out of your goddamn mind, you should probably stop reading now and endure this as it was meant to be endured.

To be clear, that was not a recommendation.

To be fair, there are a couple positives, starting with the opening credits. More accurately, the song playing over those credits isn't one I've heard before, which is virtually unheard of in this kind of thing. Typically they either play one of a dozen or so classics or take classic Christmas music and adjust it for the genre, but this... it was actually something new. That doesn't mean you can expect something similar during the end credits - those just kick off with a creepy version of Silent Night (I warned you there'd be spoilers). But that's not remotely the worst thing about the end credits - more on that later. 

Where were we? Oh yes: compliments! The movie's three leads (Alice Eve, Josh Peck, and Brian Geraghty) are decent, and some of the men's dialogue is believably cloying.

I'm still counting that as a compliment. Mainly because I'm fresh out. 

A movie like this really needs to give us something to latch onto - likeable characters, a scenario that's believably terrifying, or twists we remember. It basically punts on the first option, likely gambling we won't begrudge the movie for the leads' fates if we're not too attached. As for the second option, it tries for a scenario that's at least viscerally scary but fails due to... Well....

Look, as a rule I don't think plot holes are remotely as serious as a lot of online critics make them out to be. For the most part, movies gloss over details because exposition is a waste of time in a medium that's concise by nature. However, in a movie where we're spending an hour in and around an ATM booth, we're left with a lot of time to ask ourselves whether the situation is as frightening a trap as the movie expects us to believe. When the film sticks characters in an enclosed location and asks us to consider how we'd feel and react in the same situation, it invites questions and objections. And when the twist is, "this wasn't personal; just a sociopath with a plan," you need that plan to be better than, "hope the random victims left their cell phones in the car, none of the bystanders know how to fight, and no one does anything unpredictable."

If a movie is compelling enough, this stuff slips by unnoticed, but - again - ATM doesn't make it work.

The other thing that might have salvaged the experience would have been a good twist (or really any kind of exceptional ending). And this is where the movie really pulls out all the stops and delivers something... fine, I guess? The reveal, as I alluded above, is that the killer isn't here as part of any kind of personal vendetta. He's just a random guy who planned out a random attack at this location. And his objective is two-fold: kill a bunch of people and frame the only survivor. To do this, he stages everything methodically to tell a story where one of the victims appears to be the killer. He ensures he never appears on any of the security cameras, and he tricks the victims into doing his dirty work.

This isn't entirely out of left field. The killer has maintained distance from the ATM booth the whole movie (the leads assume he doesn't know the door lock is busted), and he only uses weapons found (and left) at the scene and in the victims' car. And while he stays out of sight of the ATM cameras, the leads' erratic behavior (which escalates to violence a few times) appears damning.

It's sort of clever if you don't think about it too hard. The problem is, we have far too much time to spend reflecting on the scenario, so by the time the twist plays out, the holes are glaringly apparent. And that's before adding in bizarre coincidences working out in the killer's favor, such as the leads not having working cell phones, a random person wearing a virtually identical jacket to the killer walking into the ATM halfway through (the leads kill a guy thinking he's the sociopath, only to realize... you get the idea), and everyone behaving in the exact way they'd need to. Even then, it seems like a recreation of events would make it clear the survivor was being set up, particularly since he'll still be around to tell his side of the story.

Again, I know this kind of rational analysis is a bad approach to watching movies. The point here isn't how things play out, it's the horror of what's happening. But when that horror isn't particularly interesting, the holes become obvious.

Themes, of course, reflect the arbitrary scenario. The leads work for an investment firm, and one (the eventual survivor) is depressed a client yelled at him after losing a significant portion of their savings. He feels bad about it but insists it was simply random luck. The movie never implies otherwise, nor does it seem like there was anything the character could have done. The horror is supposed to lie in the lack of justification or reason. No one's being punished intentionally.

The holiday setting isn't used much. The movie starts at an office Christmas party, and there are a few nods to themes of the new year and new horizons. Alice Eve's character is set to leave her job, and Brian Geraghty's finally works up the courage to propose a date. Of course, neither of those futures ever come to pass, but the false hope of a typical New Year's movie is a valid use of the setting.

There's also a hint of a solstice connection, with the characters trying to endure the long, cold winter night. One of the first things the killer does is sabotage the heater, leaving his victims at the mercy of that cold (he's better dressed for the weather than they are). They spend a comically long portion of the movie not using body heat before finally rubbing their hands together (this was written by someone who grew up in Hollywood, wasn't it?). At any rate, the idea of a group of people trying to drive the proverbial cold winter away is here, even if the movie only kind of half-asses it. That's still a common winter solstice trope, coupled with the echoes of a Christmas ghost story.

But I promised more criticism of the end credits. The movie cuts footage of the killer creating blueprints of other locations where he can commit other crimes (we were shown similar footage in the opening credits as foreshadowing). And all that's fine, except at the end of the movie, we're shown a comically large amount of footage. It just keeps going, as if implying something is going to change or be revealed. The movie seems to be actively punishing viewers for watching through the credits. It's baffling.

I really can't recommend this to much of anyone. It's not the worst Christmas horror movie out there, but there's very little payoff for a tedious viewing experience.