A young Jacob Sawyer (Jason Behr of Skinwalkers) decides to tattoo a pentagram on his forearm. His bible-thumping father disapproves to the extent that he cuts the tattoo off with a knife. Flash-forward about twenty years and Jake is working as a tattoo artist in Singapore. While following a beautiful woman named Sina (Mia Blake), he stumbles upon a small group of Samoans who are tattooing a young man in a ritualistic rite of passage. For whatever reason, Jake decides to steal one of their wooden tattooing instruments, and inadvertently cuts himself with it shortly thereafter.
The wound does not seem to heal properly and Jake starts to have strange visions and nightmares. He travels to New Zealand to track down the Samoans, and starts working at a tattoo shop of an old friend. He eventually finds Sina and they engage in a taboo love affair. She even lets him tattoo a flower on the small of her back.
All the people Jake tattoos start to mysteriously die off in a gruesome pool of blood and ink. When Jacob realizes this, it becomes a race against time to find the cause of the deaths and to save Sina from impending doom.
The Tattooist is a simple film with a straightforward plot and routine characters. There is nothing particularly scary or suspenseful about the film, yet the story is creative enough to maintain interest. There is only a nominal amount of blood and gore, but there are a couple of scenes with fairly good makeup/visual effects.
Overall, there's nothing about this film that makes it stand out from the multitude of other "ho-hum" horror movies being produced these days. Again, the plot was interesting enough to prevent complete boredom, but it's not a film I'd care to sit through again.
People who like supernatural thrillers may enjoy this film, but don't expect to be scared senseless with this one.
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