ATM

Director: David Brooks (2012)
Starring: Brian Geraghty, Josh Peck, Alice Eve
Find it: IMDB

The compelling story of three idiots who don't realise that they outnumber a not-that-scary murderer by three-to-one. Following an office Christmas party, three drones (Geraghty, Drake or Josh from off've Drake and Josh, and Eve) stop off at a 24 hour ATM so as Drake or Josh can get the money to buy himself a pizza. Trapped inside as a violent killer decides he'd rather not let them out, the kids face the unenviable choice between being gruesomely murdered or freezing to death. Despite the fact that, you know, they outnumber him three-to-one.

A typical film of the 'trapped' subgenre, ATM does very little that you haven't seen before, but just enough that you shouldn't withdraw (like a debit card, not a penis) in boredom before it's all over with. At the very least, it might help cut down on that fucking ridiculous urban myth that if you enter your PIN number backwards on a cash machine, it automatically alerts the police. Bad luck if your PIN happens to be '0220'. No-one gives a shit about you, palindromes.

Fairly tense and frequently gory, ATM is just likeable enough to hold viewer interest, even as Drake or Josh tries to convince us that he's a real actor and a black security guard shows up to, predictably, die immediately. No-one has a lower life expectancy than the security guard or cop who shows up halfway through a horror film to offer the protagonists a glimmer of hope when all looks darkest. And if he's black, you know you're really fucked.

Peck is surprisingly good as annoying office worker Corey, while Alice Eve impresses as the token female. Geraghty is a dull lead, but his plight is such that we sympathise with him nevertheless. Cockblocked by a serial killer and Drake or Josh from off've Drake and Josh in the same night? Now that is unlucky. 

The makers of ATM would no doubt love for me to say that it "does for cashpoints what Jaws did for the ocean and Psycho for showers", but since the heroes of those films weren't incapable, cowardly idiots, that would mostly be a lie.