“Welcome to the family”
A tense and shocking gore-fest, Lure marks Oliver Cox’s feature-length writing and directorial debut, bringing high-stakes mental games back into horror.
Islay (Silvia Presente) is a wealthy heiress to her family fortune and, believing her bloodline must be preserved at all costs, is determined to find an eligible bachelor to father her future heir and continue the family’s high-class lineage. Under the guise of an exciting birthday celebration, she invites six unsuspecting men to her remote, impressive, and very British family estate.
Convincing and conniving, once they are inside, there is no escaping their fate—they must take part in a treacherous game that will likely result in their deaths.
With no mercy for any man that disobeys her, including her own family, Islay entirely controls the room, demeaning and degrading her guests. The ball is firmly in her court as we watch her command the group of men, shrinking them to powerlessness and compelling them to double-cross one another just to survive her sick scheme.
Lure leaves nothing to the imagination, throwing us into the deep end as the men wake up in Islay’s home, questioning exactly what has happened and what happened to the kind girl they met. Panicked and increasingly aware of their fate, the mental games begin. Like any game, there are rules to her ‘manhunt’: you cannot leave the room, kill another player, or make contact with anyone outside of the house. However, there is a catch—you cannot do any of these things unless instructed to. Breaking a rule or failing to perform results in an immediate forfeit or even elimination, which in Islay’s twisted game means death.
From the get-go, this sets a tense tone for Lure, pre-empting that things are about to become sinister and that these men may need to make decisions that test trust and solidarity between one another, with fear and pain.
We watch the six men, Tom (Kit Esuruoso), Joe (Joey Lockhart), Connor (Joshua Dowden), Marcus (Gregory Fung), Francis (Samy Elkhatib), and Damien (Reece Henderson), battle with their own personalities and priorities as Cox deliberately crafts characters that contrast each other. As pressure mounts, these differences begin to cause cracks in their sense of survival and solidarity, with some of the group teetering into an ‘every man for himself’ mentality. This adds another deep layer to Lure, reinforcing Islay’s truly cruel intentions.
Lure differs somewhat from other narratively similar horror releases, such as 2019’s Ready or Not, presenting a less comedic and more gore-focused approach to these mentally and physically taxing games. Whilst it succeeds at being an undeniably tense and shocking gore-fest, by the closing scene, several plot points feel undeveloped, risking leaving us confused about the unanswered questions. From Edward using Tom and his dad’s code word for safety, to the kind bartender, to the mysterious ‘ringleader’ of the games sitting behind the camera, these open doors could have been walked through to add more context and help Lure’s consistency.
As we’re left questioning the fate of what remains, Lure leaves its story open for further exploration.
Lure will be available to stream digitally from Reel2Reel Films on 2 February.
