Product Details

• Actors: Kristen Miller, Elena Uhlig, Thorsten Grasshoff, John Hopkins, Isla Fisher
• Directors: Boris von Sychowski
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Live / Artisan
• DVD Release Date: September 24, 2002
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00006FD94
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #50,248 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Pool" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A mixed bag of attractive and empty-headed international students spend their final day of school at a large and ornate indoor pool in Prague. As they while away the evening with alcohol, dancing, and casual sex, a masked killer whittles down their number in a variety of gruesome ways. While imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery, it's likely that Messrs. Carpenter and Cunningham et al. would find this European-made slasher film more insult than homage. Director and cowriter Boris von Sychowski's debut attempts to ape Wes Craven's Scream, but his risible dialogue and inept, crazy-quilt cast only succeed in presenting a more aggravating version of that film's self-conscious tone. It's numbingly derivative and lowbrow from start to finish, and only the most non-discerning gorehounds will find anything here worth their 89 minutes. For the truly commitment-free, Artisan's DVD presentation includes some behind-the-scenes interviews. --Paul Gaita

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Typical Terror Tripe, April 14, 2003

By	Morbus Iff (Concord, NH USA) - See all my reviews

This movie is all too typical of the slasher film, and evidence that film makers in Germany/Czechoslovakia have no more creativity than our own American ilk. With copious accents, Heineken advertisements and the typical "coming of age meets coming of death" plot, plodding through THE POOL is an exercise in pleading.

The movie starts with your typical SCREAM beginning: girl chats on phone whilst making dinner, gets a spooky call, runs outside, finds her boyfriend dead, and then dies herself. To make matters worse, the killer looks like a reject from Saturday Night Live's "Sprockets" ("now is the time on Sprockets WHERE WE KILL!"). Cue the Dawson's Creek / Felicity soft rock, and we're going down hill within the first five minutes. From there, we follow our cast as they stage an illegal party at the local pool resort.

There are some relatively decent aspects as the movie is expertly filmed with good scenery (it is Europe after all) and some slight twists on expectations: instead of the opening fodder grabbing a knife, she attempts a shotgun, instead of one car playing [bad] music, an envoy of student vehicles engage in synchronizing [awfulness], and instead of using CDs, these supposed "rich kids" use cassettes.

Deaths are nothing too inventive, but two in particular "succeed" visually: the death of the poor girl, Kim (Isla Fisher), is held a bit longer than you'd expect, and the vent killing of Martin (Jason Liggett) is decently conveyed by blood running down his hands as its clenched by a helpful Sarah. The most inventive scene is spoiled before the movie even starts - "knife to water sliding female crotch" is the DVD's flipping menu intro, for God's sake.

With no nudity besides a quick flashing, the standard "heroine overcomes her fear" sub-plot resolves, and the remaining survivors create a love triangle of "you cheated on my boyfriend, but it's ok because WE'RE ALIVE!". The most telling aspect of THE POOL is a line at the end of the movie, "I know what you did last summer...", whose only decent viewer response is "yer goddamn right!".

The 16:9 widescreen DVD includes "Behind the Scenes" (10:37, consisting of clips from the movie, mini-interviews, shots of the water slide kill, etc.), a photo gallery (30 images), filmographies of the directory and cast, Spanish subtitles, and the expected trailer (1:17, Voice over: "It was their last day of term. When you've been there, done that, you need somewhere special to go... but it's about to become a night they'll never forget... because someone is watching, waiting, and ready... to KILL! Now, the only way to stay alive, is to follow the rules." On screen: "Now Running. No Diving. No Splashing. Welcome to the Deep End.").

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Scream on Friday the 13th, Part 1000, October 14, 2002

By	Patrick Koellner "Patrick Koellner" (Marl) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One of the most boring horrorflicks ever. All the actors are much too old and much too untalented. The plot is just a joke, the entire film is completely redundant.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Amazing... Scenes But Oh So Annoying, October 21, 2002

By A Customer

The characters in this movie are just so annoying and many of them are terribly dubbed. TERRIBLY!! This is like a MENTOS commercial that turns into a slasher movie. The majority of the performers are obviously european and trying to act very American even with their silly dubbed voices. The effort to seem like randy college students is probably the most overdone and surreal try ever to grace any film. It is just ATROCIOUS!! The women are mean, the men are stupidly oversexed and they bop their heads up and down to rock music while drinking and driving and the like. Not that college students don't act that way but in this film it really comes off and more or less like some of the character Lulu's antics in John Waters' POLYESTER. Like getting overexcited to the point of absurdity by the mere thought of liquor or.... This movie wins the prize for leaving the viewer with absolutely no empathy for any of the characters until they start to get killed. If I knew any of these people, I would hate them and be very glad that they had passed on, to put it mildly.
Somewhere along the way the characters become much less annoying and the way they are dispatched is definately some of the more original teen slasher deaths in memory. It does make too much use of the cutaway, meaning you get the idea but you don't usually get to see any actual body penetration.
The killer looks like a cross between the SCREAM ghost mask and the PUNISHER character from MARVEL comics.

This movie is actually fun but you have to wait a good 50 minutes before you actually begin to just give up.