ATM is a 2012 film directed by David Brooks and starring Brian Geraghty, Alice Eve, and Josh Peck. It’s listed on Wikipedia as a “thriller” film but I’m not sure I’d go that far.

I was first introduced to ATM when ScareTissue contributor Brian posted the trailer to my Facebook wall. And I’ll be honest with you… it’s a pretty bad ass trailer (I’ll link it below so you can check it out). Pip and I watched this flick after our day at HorrorHound in Indianapolis.

In a word… meh.

THE PLOT

David (Brian Geraghty) is having issues asking his co-worker Emily (Alice Eve) on a date. She’s leaving their company so that night’s Christmas party will be his last chance. He offers to give her a ride home but his buddy Corey (Josh Peck) pulls the ultimate cock block move and asks to get a ride as well. Naturally, sir Cock Block is hungry on the way home and wants to stop for a bite to eat. However he needs to stop at an ATM first (insert dramatic sound effect here).

He (naturally) has problems with his card, so the 3 of them end up in an ATM vestibule without Jill Goodacre. Apologies for the Friends reference I couldn’t help myself. They’re about to leave but they see a dude standing in the parking lot just sort of watching them. Instead of walking out like any normal people would, they decide to stand there and look back at him. Up walks dude #2 walking his dog (at like 1:00 AM in the middle of a parking lot…. WTF???) and creepy watcher guy kills him. OK, now we’ve finally got a problem.

From here we get to the main meat of the story with these 3 trying to get to their car where they’ve left their cell phones and dude trying to keep them in the ATM. Dude shuts off the heat to the ATM and clears the area of the dead dog walker. A while later, bad guy walks into the ATM and the 3 kill him… but then they find out it’s some other random dude that happens to be dressed just like bad dude.

Some more stuff happens, one of the 3 manages to get himself stabbed by bad dude while trying to get to the car, bad dude floods the ATM, stabbed guy eventually dies in the ATM after turning purple. The 2 remaining “heroes” (assholes) come up with a plan to trigger the sprinkler system. David puts Emily on his shoulders and while he manages to get her high enough to get the sprinkler system on, he also manages to drop and kill her. Facepalm.

David finally manages to escape the ATM, but by this point the hooded guy has planted evidence that makes it look like David is the bad guy so the cops arrest him and take him away. In the last scene and throughout the credits, the hooded man (who we never get to know) returns to his “headquarters” where we see him sitting with maps and blueprints and apparently planning his next caper.

THOUGHTS

In case you can’t tell, I wasn’t a big fan. Let’s start off with my first obvious question / issue. So we’re to believe that you go into an ATM, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a parking lot… and you leave you phone in the car? Come on bro. In today’s day and age folks have a panic attack if they walk out of the house without their phone. No chance you’d leave it behind.

This is a moderately “thrilling” flick, but with the absolutely ZERO resolution we get here I was really let down. And there’s just a lot of sort of “waiting around”. The 3 main characters actually do very well with what they’ve been given, but the script is just really weak. Brian Geraghty does a great job looking like Corey Feldman, Alice Eve does a great job looking hot, and Josh Peck does a great job being an asshole so you don’t really care if he dies. The bad guy is a throw back to the killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer but dude has no motive, no reason to be tormenting these kids, etc. And while I suppose there are really assholes like this out there, as a horror movie it just doesn’t work for me.

The (very well done) trailer gives us this:

No warning… No control… No way out…

Sadly, it forgets to mention “no answers” and “no resolution”. ATM had a budget of $3 million and managed to pull in a whopping $110,000 at the box office so I’m guessing there will be “no sequel”. Watch the trailer, skip the movie.

Have you see ATM? Let me know if I’m off base!