INTRODUCTION: SAW-LITE FOR PEOPLE WHO FEAR DECISIONS
Some horror movies leave you trembling in fear. Choose leaves you staring at the screen muttering, “Wait, what just happened?” Directed by Marcus Graves, this 2011 crime-horror mashup tries desperately to blend the moral torment of Saw with the procedural grit of Se7en. What we get instead is Law & Order: Existential Crisis Unit.
It’s called Choose, but no one involved in this movie seems to have made a good choice. Not the killer, not the victims, and definitely not the audience who sat through it.
The film premiered at the Halloween All-Nighter FrightFest in 2011 — presumably to give exhausted festivalgoers an opportunity to take a nap.
THE PLOT: SOPHIE’S CHOICE MEETS COMMUNITY THEATER
Our heroine Fiona Wagner (Katheryn Winnick, doing her best to look serious while trapped in a script that reads like fan fiction for Dateline NBC) is a grad student studying journalism — which means she spends most of her time looking at microfiche and staring pensively at corkboards.
She’s also mourning her mother’s suicide, which the movie brings up repeatedly because it mistakes “sad backstory” for “character development.” Her father, Detective Tom Wagner (Kevin Pollak, looking like he’d rather be at craft services eating donuts), is investigating a series of grisly murders that all share one gimmick: the victims are forced to make impossible choices before dying.
So it’s Saw, but without traps, creativity, or budget.
We open with a suburban family being held hostage by a masked intruder who forces the teenage daughter to “choose” which of her parents to kill. The movie expects us to gasp — but since the scene plays out with all the intensity of a hostage reenactment at a middle school talent show, we mostly just shrug.
Next, a concert pianist is kidnapped and told to choose between his hearing and his fingers. That scene at least has potential for gruesome horror — until it cuts away, presumably because the production could only afford one bucket of fake blood and needed to save it for later.
Soon, the killer — who goes by the very 2000s screen name ISO_17 — begins contacting Fiona directly, for reasons that make absolutely no sense but at least give the plot something resembling motion. She gets cryptic messages, breathy phone calls, and the occasional jump scare that feels like it wandered in from a different, better movie.
THE CHARACTERS: DECISIVELY DULL
Let’s start with Fiona. She’s our supposed heroine, but mostly she just wanders from one poorly lit scene to another, Googling things and making the same confused expression she probably wore when reading the script. The movie desperately wants her to be Nancy Drew for the serial-killer era, but she has the investigative instincts of a houseplant.
Kevin Pollak, as her detective dad, spends the entire film toggling between “concerned father” and “grizzled cop,” which mostly involves sighing heavily and rubbing his forehead. You can practically hear his inner monologue: “I was in The Usual Suspects. What am I doing here?”
Then there’s Bruce Dern, who shows up as a creepy psychologist because someone on set realized the movie didn’t have enough gravitas. He mumbles about trauma and free will for a few scenes before disappearing entirely, possibly having escaped the production.
The killer, meanwhile — ISO_17 — might be one of the least menacing villains in horror history. He’s got the charisma of an IT help desk worker who took his “anonymous username” too literally. He spends more time explaining his crimes via exposition than actually committing them. His motivation? Something about justice and choices and hypocrisy — the usual serial-killer fridge-magnet philosophy.
When his identity is finally revealed (spoiler: it’s not interesting), you’ll wish he’d stayed anonymous forever.
THE TONE: NEITHER FISH NOR FILLET KNIFE
Choose can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be. One minute it’s a cop thriller, the next it’s a slasher, the next it’s a somber psychological drama about grief. The result feels like three mediocre movies Frankensteined together by someone who’s never used editing software before.
There’s no tension, no rhythm, and certainly no scares. The film confuses “dark lighting” with “mood,” so half the time you can’t even see what’s happening. (Which, honestly, might be a blessing.)
And the dialogue — oh, the dialogue. Every conversation sounds like it was written by someone who’s never heard two humans talk. Gems include:
“Sometimes we make choices, and sometimes choices make us.”
and
“You can’t unchoose the past, Fiona.”
I swear, at one point I expected someone to whisper, “It’s not the choosing that defines us — it’s the chooser.”
If you ever wanted to watch a film that feels like a motivational poster dipped in fake blood, congratulations — your wish has been granted.
THE DIRECTION: MURDER BY MONOTONY
Marcus Graves directs Choose with all the flair of a man who’s been awake for 72 hours and given up on the concept of storyboarding. Scenes are stitched together with the narrative logic of a dream you immediately forget after waking up.
Every shot is drenched in the same sickly blue filter, as if the cinematographer shot the entire movie through a bottle of windshield washer fluid. The editing is equally erratic, cutting to random flashbacks that add nothing except confusion.
The “scary” moments rely entirely on jump scares — which might work if they weren’t so predictable. You can set your watch to them: soft violin music, character looks in a mirror, cat noise, loud chord, rinse, repeat.
Even the killer’s voice — a distorted whisper meant to sound ominous — just makes him sound like he’s prank-calling from a bathroom.
THE MESSAGE: CHOICES, CONSEQUENCES, AND CONFUSION
Like most bad thrillers with delusions of grandeur, Choose tries to make a statement about morality. The killer forces people to make impossible decisions because… free will? Sin? Society? Honestly, it’s never clear.
Every victim’s “choice” is supposed to reveal something about human nature, but all it reveals is that the screenwriter owns a thesaurus and a DVD copy of Se7en.
The film throws around words like “accountability” and “justice” as if repeating them will suddenly make it profound. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
By the time the final twist rolls around — involving Fiona, her dead mother, and some generational trauma that makes zero sense — the only real choice the audience is making is whether to finish the movie or gouge out their eyes with the remote.
THE ENDING: ALL BAD THINGS MUST COME TO A CHOICE
The climax involves the killer kidnapping Fiona and forcing her to — you guessed it — make a choice. It’s supposed to be tense and emotionally devastating, but it lands with all the impact of a wet paper towel.
There’s shouting, crying, and philosophical monologues about guilt and forgiveness. Then it ends abruptly, as if even the editor finally gave up and said, “Yeah, that’s enough choosing for one movie.”
The credits roll, the lights come up, and you’re left wondering if this was secretly a PSA about decision fatigue.
FINAL VERDICT: MAKE BETTER CHOICES
Choose had potential — a decent premise, a competent cast, and a chance to explore moral horror in an original way. Instead, it squandered all that on half-baked philosophy, lazy writing, and production values that scream “direct-to-DVD clearance bin.”
It’s not the worst movie ever made — it’s just aggressively mediocre, which is almost worse. You don’t hate it. You just forget it five minutes after it ends, like a bad dream about a crossword puzzle.
If you’re looking for a film about impossible moral choices, watch Saw. If you want something about grief and mystery, try The Night House. But if you want to experience the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in line behind someone debating which gum to buy, Choose is for you.
Rating: 1 out of 5 Moral Dilemmas.
Because sometimes, the scariest choice is pressing “Play.” 🎥🔪📞
