Our friends out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Needle for us to cover today, and I’ve actually been looking forward to catching this one for some time now. And while the story was strange enough to keep my interest since I first heard about it, would the execution prove likewise?

Needle follows a young man who’s just inherited a bizarre 18th century device that is reputed to have mysterious and wholly paranormal powers over life and death. And when the device is stolen one day, and our young inheritor’s friends find themselves dropping dead of random and frightful causes, that suddenly makes the device’s powers a much closer reality than any of them thought. Now they have to not only find out who stole the device but also how to stop the device from killing more of them.

Needle is, essentially, a fairly standard slasher film in the style of Scream, except that the killer has been replaced by a poorly-explained mechanical device with ominous and wholly unaccountable magic powers. Seriously, I’m not a hundred percent sure just how the device actually worked besides being some kind of mechanical voodoo solution. The thing’s even called Le Vaudou Mort, which pretty much explains that much. Though admittedly, I do like the thought of a voodoo machine–makes me wonder how many witch doctors and whatnot it’s put out of business.

Still though, this isn’t too bad as long as you don’t look at it really deeply. Once you just quietly accept the idea of the voodoo machine, most everything else just nicely falls into place and does a fair job. Any kind of depth on this one, though, tears it to tiny bits and renders the whole thing mostly unwatchable.

It’s really rather formulaic, except for the primary plot element. Thus, if you’re willing to be charitable you’re left with a unique idea done reasonably well. Those disinclined to charity are left with a preposterous plot element orchestrated in a thoroughly mediocre fashion.

I’m reasonably pleased with this one myself, and though it’s got a few holes in its plot that could have stood a bit more fleshing out, the end result will do fairly decently.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives Needle a six out of ten. It’s passable, though not much else, and puts on a reasonably good show for what you get. Its primary plot element is a bit on the weak side, but it still makes for at least a fairly decent time.