This is a throwaway horror. You know the kind that you watch once and then forget about it? This is one of them. It's entertaining and a little shocking at the start but then it just becomes a formulaic by numbers horror/thriller where you just have to leave your brain by the door. The story is NOT well told. You never find out who the burnt man is who is doing these killings. Who is putting him up to the murders or why can't the police find him before he kills again. You just watch a teen fodder is killed over and over again and the fact this movie is called Chain Letter gives you an idea how they are killed. Plus also this film doesn't show that much of the gore. It gives you a little but it's so fast, blink and you miss it. Let me say this, this is not SAW, this is not a teenage version of SAW and as others have stated it will never be like SAW. If they had told more of the story towards the origin of these killings, this film might have been good and yes even THAT ending would have be explained better and therefore more shocking when it plays out as the final act. However it's just a forgettable horror that leaves you confused and underwhelmed.

Blood and guts with very little plot. CHAIN LETTER has a group of high school friends receiving an electronic chain letter that demands they each forward the message or suffer the consequences. They think very little of the message treating it as an online prank. Now the violence begins as the tech-savvy sender begins tracking down his prey one by one. How long will it take to believe the chain letter is responsible for brutal murders? The remaining teens now take the mystery sender seriously as they are forced to fight for their lives. The graphics are more interesting than the too familiar plot. Dialogue and acting are nothing to rave about; but the murders are creative. In the cast: Madison Bauer, Cherilyn Wilson, Nikki Reed, Matt Cohen, Michael J. Pagan and Brad Dourif.

Chain Letter was made at the time that the Saw franchise was over and all torture porn was over. The producers even got Betsy Russell in this flick who got fame due the Saw franchise. But the story itself is a bit weak.Deon Taylor, the director would like to make a good horror but so far he failed, his first attempt 7eventy 5ive (2007) wasn't that good but he knew he had to add some gory bits to the story. That succeeded here in Chain Letter but you just couldn't get involved with the characters. Even the story about the killer isn't really explained. It do make you think about being online and using cellphones with GPS and things you are giving free to hackers without knowing it. But most of those flicks fail to deliver, Hellraiser Hellworld (2005) showed us that even an horror icon just couldn't deliver pain and torture. The script also reminded me on the overlooked FearDotCom (2002). It also shows that when you put big names from the genre in one flick it doesn't give you a hit. Nikki Reed here as Jessie Campbell and seen in the Twilight saga is the main lead and she did well but still I just couldn't care what would happen to her. And look the the fallen angel Noah Segan, he was going to be the next thing in the genre and made a few good flicks, Deadgirl (2008) and his breakthrough with Cabin Fever 2 and Someone's Knocking At The Door, both from 2009. Here he got just a small role. Of course the teaser would be Brad Dourif, but again he just got a small part.Luckily the film is saved by the gore added and it was good to see that it was done with the real stuff and not with CGI. It do has a few gory moments but for a torture porn too less to become a classic. The suspense is just not there. Maybe the underground figure was Cherilyn Wilson as Rachael Conners, she do moved on from this flick to small roles in Dexter and True blood, one to look out for and she isn't afraid to show her body, She's the only one here who goes fully undressed and has a close-up as gratuitous as it can be of her juggs. Chain Letter isn't that good after all but some gore saved the letter...Gore 3/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

I like a good horror movie, but this piece of crap is nothing more than a few extremely gruesome kill scenes taped together with a script written by a forth grader. I hate torture porn, I hate the proliferation of it, had I known this was going to be that I would not have watched it, in fact I only watched up to the point where the Johnny Jones character is brutally tortured and killed, the scene made me sick so I did a quick eject and threw it back in the mail. The convoluted history of this film should have been a clear warning to me to stay far far away. This was filmed in 2007 and bounced from distributor to distributor until the most desperate distributor finally decided to release this turkey on a innocent public. Do not waste your time on this straight to video mess, the acting is horrible, no story whatsoever and it is truly disgusting. I hope someone out there with a brain bigger than a chimps will inject the genre with intelligent horror and not ride on sick gore which if the story sucks is not worth watching anyway, two thumbs down