Scar Tissue

Scott Michell’s Scar Tissue is 50 percent teen rom-com, 50 percent thriller and 100 percent awful. Bad acting, preposterous plot lines and a poor script, the film relies on grisly violence and loud noises to keep the audience awake.

The tone of the film is a bit confused: at first we feel like we’re in some sort of teen movie as we watch main character Luke Denham, played by Danny Horn, doing DIY for an aroused middle-aged woman. Then he makes his way to a strip bar for his 21^st birthday and we’re told of his “lack of action” in recent times. We see him wake up hungover the next morning and then – bang – his best friend Cass has been mutilated in his bathroom overnight.

What we would expect at this point is terror, grief and maybe a bit of panic. Instead, Luke seems quite unfazed and embarks on an adventure to find out who’s following him. Oh, and in the meantime he starts a relationship with mentally unstable cop Sam Cross, played by Charity Wakefield.

Cliché is the main downfall of Scar Tissue. Cross, for example, is such a pastiche of the tough girl with psychological troubles that it’s almost farcical. We see her first in a boxing ring: after answering her phone she knocks her competitor out and asks “now can I fuck off?” This sets the scene of the rest of the dialogue.

This level of cliché leads to a sense of predictability. Within five minutes the audience knows exactly how each character will respond to a remark and what joke will come when. Of course Cross only drinks beer with a whisky chaser, of course Denham will break her tough exterior and expose the soft side within. You get the picture. 

The plot line gets more and more outrageous as the films careers to an eye-rolling conclusion. The finale is a muddle of botched science fiction, social commentary and rom-com. The ridiculousness of this ending eradicates any fear or thrill, it’s barely even creepy.

From the unnecessarily gory special effects to the awkwardness of the acting, everything in Scar Tissue felt more like an A Level media student’s project than a serious film.

Joanna Byrne

Scar Tissue is released nationwide on 25^th July 2014.

Watch the trailer for Scar Tissue here: