Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Excellent, a Must See

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Nothing like a movie about a group of friends who not only all dislike each other to the point of loathing, but they have little to no redeeming qualities to make an *audience* like or empathize with any of the characters either. There are movies so bad they are good (a la Ed Wood or Tod Slaughter films), and there's just plain bad (like 99% of Uwe Boll's "work"). This film is barely tolerable even if you are a brilliantly talented MSTie riffer (e.g., Mystery Science Theatre 3000). Thankfully while I am rather talented in that regard (it's how my mind works All The Time), for those who are not so naturally talented in MSTie riffing, eventually into *this* film you'll just want to pull your own head off, painfully aware the movie "Taboo" robs you of about an hour and twenty minutes you'll never get back. Even my MSTie talents were barely a match for this slow paced, boring waste of time. The most puzzling aspect of this film is that *someone* green-lit and/or funded it... I rented "Taboo" solely for the normally talented Amber Benson, who clearly must have been blackmailed into doing this film. I've another lesser known film of hers in my rental queue, the reviews to which I'd better read first. Ironically the best aspect of the film was its impressive labyrinthine mansion for its interior location.

The story in 'Taboo' lays at the border between teenager horror stories and the close space mystery plots, where the authors gather a small - and decreasing - number of characters into a close enclosure, preferable a castle or a running train, or a cabin in the mountains, under the pretext of a snow storm, or more recently of reality shows rules. In this case, the formula works quite well, and the story has some logic, triggered by a kind of cruel 'truth or deed' game, pushed to its ultimate solution. I saw that many other viewers who cared to comment on IMDb did not like the result, I am wondering why because the film never gets into ridicule, the pace is quite appropriate, and the solution of the plot makes sense. If I am to blame the authors for something, their main sin seems to be to me the fact that they avoided shocking the viewers in any way. The result is that despite having at hand a group of young and talented actors, the film never gets its promise of conflict, sexual, or artistic tension - almost like the film makers were trying to get some prime time rating from American TV parent counseling. I was slightly disappointed, but I am not asking for my money back. 6 out of 10 on my personal scale.

Taboo (2002) Nick Stahl, January Jones, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Lori Heuring, Derek Hamilton, Amber Benson, D: Max Makowski.A game about desires and secrets brings out the worst in six young people holed up in a secluded mansion on New Year's Eve with one of them a rapist, a homosexual, an infidel, a prostitute, and a hypocrite, and soon their little game breaks out into murder.Meant to be clever, but no one in their right mind could rightfully compare this to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Underneath is an appalling thriller hampered by clichéd characters, dull story turns, and ultimately, a terrible script that runs short on interest. Filmed in Romania and taken place all in someone's house. Direct-to-video.Running Time: 80 minutes and rated R for some language, sexual content, and violence.RATING: * (out of ****)

Some bad kids (in more ways than one!) settle their behavioral problems in a creepy old house on a stormy night. Trite. Goofy and uneven, to say the least, but there's no excuse for the omission of gratuitous sex and violence in a trash flick like this, which is supposedly aimed at the youth market. Unattractive.