At a party a group of high school jocks are drinking, flipping coins and talking dirty about girls when suddenly one produces a revolver and initiates a game of Russian roulette in the opening sequence of Seconds Apart.
In quick succession four students blow their brains out, a highly original way to introduce a dark, creepy tale of identical twins that malevolently use their powers of mind control to eliminate anyone who bugs them.
Among the first batch of titles from US horror house After Dark Films released in Australia, the film benefits from a taut screenplay by George Richards, credible performances and decent production values.
In his second turn as director following the 2007 Colombian thriller Hacia la oscuridad /Towards Darkness, Antonio Negret generates a fair number of scares and surprises although he’s overly fond of theatrical flourishes typified by scenes of an inferno.
Identical twins Gary and Edmund Entin play the siblings Seth and Jonah, who live in a Gothic mansion with their sinister-looking parents. They comb their hair and brush their teeth in unison and sleep in the same bed, facing each other. A hazy backstory involving the circumstances of their birth and some unpleasantness with a babysitter explains their evil intentions.
Detective Lampkin (Orlando Jones), a cop with his own hang-ups, quickly suspects the jocks were homicide victims rather than reckless fools and he starts to take a close look at the twins. His suspicions are further aroused when the Catholic school’s principal and another student die in gruesome ways.
The boys function as a tight-knit unit until Jonah falls for cute new student Eve (Samantha Droke), who finds him weird but interesting, Seth is upset and sibling rivalry turns poisonous.
The Entins are good looking lads who convincingly exhibit frustration, jealousy, coldness and rage. The plot does beg one obvious question: If the evil twins can control people’s minds, why don’t they simply mess with Lampkin’s brain cells?
The title refers to the brothers being born 93 seconds apart.
