The Flock (2007)

From IMDb (yuk!): "This film is about a hyper-vigilant employee of the department of public safety who, while training his young female replacement, has to track down a missing girl who he is convinced is connected to a paroled sex offender he is investigating."

I'm going to be lenient about "The Flock". It's the kind of thing that fans of C.S.I. will get a kick out of but horror fans will just shrug at.

Apart from jittery edits and the grainy look that far too many films have lately, it isn't filmed too badly. At least the camera stayed still enough for it to be watchable even if the shot framing itself sometimes also left a lot to be desired.

I'm not a fan of Richard Gere though so his performance was wasted on me. He is just all wrong for the part but is slightly more suited to it than Claire Danes who doesn't really have the experience to make her role credible at all.

The story is pretty lightweight too. It's more or less "Se7en" but with sex offenders instead of serial killers and social workers instead of cops.

There are a couple of good moments which are reminiscent of "Dirty Harry" but the gory scenes (which I was looking forward to) are quite weak. You don't really get to see anything too visceral which is a shame.

KaDee Strickland is quite good as the psychotic Viola though. She was surprisingly sexy later on too. Avril Lavigne also has a very small role which will please the kiddies but it was hardly all that memorable.

The weaknesses in the script and the ludicrousness of Richard Gere's character started to grate on me after a while so I really can't rate it any higher than 2 out of 10.