“ATM” is a bare-bones horror film that feels a little long even at 90 minutes, thus giving us more time than it should to savor the story’s basic silliness.
The movie isn’t quite as claustrophobic as the 2010 “Buried,” also the work of screenwriter Chris Sparling, but it’s largely confined to a single dismal setting, which hurries the onset of an inevitable monotony.
At an office Christmas party, a young account manager named David (Brian Geraghty, of “The Hurt Locker”) finally summons the nerve to approach a pretty coworker named Emily (Alice Eve, who’ll be familiar to nudity fans from “Crossing Over”). David offers to drive Emily home, but before they can get away, another colleague, Corey (reliably enlivening Josh Peck, of “The Wackness”), invites himself along–he needs a ride home, too. En route, Corey announces a desire for pizza. But he has no cash.
And so David is compelled to pull over for a visit to what would appear to be Hell’s ATM–a familiar glass-sided shack situated in a vast, dark, empty parking lot. It’s the middle of the night, and it’s cold (we’re in Canada), so there’s not another soul in sight. Once inside the little ATM enclosure, though, the three friends suddenly notice a hulking figure outside in the dark, his face obscured in the shadow of a hood. “He’s just watching us,” David unnecessarily observes.
Not for long, of course.
Read the full review at Reason.com
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