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Welcome To Curiosity centres around a serial killer on the loose called Lee Hunting. The cops are on the hunt, and, within 90 minutes, this will also take in four stories that cross over each other.
The plot’s fairly standard stuff – good guys, bad guys, double-crossing, and a shoot-out where someone jumps over a car bonnet and lets rip with two handguns at once, a la John Woo. There’s also the age-old trope of bad guys busting into the house of two innocent peeple and imposing upon them so one can remove a bullet from the other.
The problems are that this feels like Lock Stock Lite, the acting’s not the greatest in the world and, from time to time, the film’s just not as good as it could be, because it’s like it doesn’t know how to feel as confident as it should. You can see where scenes want to get to, but nothing quite lands like it should. It seems rude to say it feels amateur and akin to a student/home-grown production, rather than a film that’s aimed at a cinema release, but that’s just how it feels. It really needs some editing to heighten the pace.
The direction is fine, with decent shot composition, but it’s what’s within that’s the problem.
Then there’s some of the dialogue: would a Polish* cop really say, “Stop *cocking* me around and let me do my fucking job”? In fact, “cock” was a word often used in the script for a while. (*at least, I think that’s her accent)
That’s when you can hear them. Sometimes the lines feel a bit muffled, so they’re not always clear. Elsewhere, the audio levels are hit and miss – sometimes both too low AND too high in the same sentence. It’s like Quality Control had a day off.
There’s also a scene, 23 minutes in, where a string of baddies all exit from individual rooms to join the entourage as it walks along a corridor – with the camera sometimes cutting to various members of said entourage… identically mirroring an early scene from Die Hard 2. How do they all know to exit at almost the precise same moment?
Aside from Amrita Acharia (The Good Karma Hospital) as Zoe, and the forever-gorgeous Kacey Barnfield (now known as Kacey Clarke, as she’s taken her mother’s maiden name), who’s biggest film to date is 2010’s Resident Evil: Afterlife, who’d have thought that the person to come out best from all this would be Richard Blackwood? He, at least, looks more ‘at home’ on set than most of the cast. It was shot four years ago, before he appeared in Eastenders, so it’s been on the shelf for some time.
Beyond a couple of interesting twists, this isn’t a case of “so bad it’s good”, but “it just exists, so, take it or leave it”.
There’s also a brief post-credits scene, which I’ll hide behind a spoiler header.
Note: This is just a review of the film only.
Welcome To Curiosity is out now in cinemas, and is released today on Blu-ray and Amazon Video, but I can’t find a DVD release on Amazon, although I understand one is available.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 94 minutes
Studio: Factory Film Studio
Year: 2018
Format: 2.35:1
Released: June 8th 2018
Rating: 2/10
Director: Ben Pickering
Producers: Ben Pickering and Darren Ripley
Screenplay: Darren Ripley
Music: Luke Corradine
Cast:
Zoe: Amrita Acharia
Sean: Jack Ashton
Fordy: Richard Blackwood
Martine: Kacey Clarke (aka Kacey Barnfield)
Stubbs: Brian Croucher
Tim: Gary Grant
Dexter: Cristian Solimeno
Lewis: Terry Sweeney
Al: Eke Chukwu
DS Binon: O’ar Pali
DI Jackson: Darren Ripley
Topic: Monty Burgess
Duffy: Lara Heller
Holly: Lily Joseph
Thomas: Christopher Rithin
Elliott: Finn Corney
Dr. Jones: Lili Bordán
Max: Stephen Marcus
Nigel: Nigel Billing
Oz: Danny Howard
Susie: Eloise Dale
Sid: Jon Campling
Simpson: Nick Corney
Henry: Julian Seager
Molly: Liberty Mills
Sharice: Nicola Kelleher
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.