The Innkeepers

Description from Netflix:

In this eerie ghost story, a venerable New England inn closes after a century in business, and the lodge’s two remaining employees are determined to uncover the truth about longtime rumors that the majestic mansion is haunted.

Things I liked:

1. Sara Paxton.  As Claire, she showed endless curiosity, boundless energy, wide-eyed wonder and abject horror.  At times – in her more awkward moments – she reminded me of a long-lost Deschanel, which is never a bad thing.  I had only seen her in a couple movies before this (The Last House on the Left and Shark Night), and she didn’t leave much of an impression on me.  She was great in this, though.  Far-and-away the best part of the movie.

This is exactly how I looked for most of this movie 

2.  The look of the movie.  West is great at making a movie look really good.  It’s almost as if Wes Anderson is directing a horror movie.  I have the same praise of House of the Devil.  He has a great sense of how to use space.  Every shot looks perfect.

Things I didn’t like:

1. The Luke character.  He annoyed me to no end.  It’s quite possible that the actor (Pat Healy) did a really good job.  The reason doesn’t matter too much.  I found him absolutely insufferable.  I hated him, his faux-hawk, his superior attitude, and everything else.  Every time he was on the screen, I was annoyed.

2.  Once you get past the look of the movie, you realize there’s not a lot going on.  The movie itself is pretty boring.  No real tension to speak of for the bulk of the film.  The dialog isn’t good.  It’s not clever.  It’s not deep.  It’s not snappy.  It’s just boring.  There’s a little build during the ending, but the movie had completely lost me by that point.  In the end, I felt like I watched 80 minutes of two people running a hotel, 10 minutes of a slow-moving ghost story, and 10 minutes of messy, unfocused insanity.

The real problem of this film is the complete lack of tension.  Scenes don’t really seem to be building towards anything.  Very few things actually happen, and the build to these events is minimal at best.

3. Random, sloppy jump scares.  As a general rule, “slow-burn” movies don’t do jump scares.  And, if they do, they’re artfully done.  This movie decided to throw that rule out the window.  There were quite a few jump scares, and none of them were very well done.  Lots of random bumps and noises.  Just lazy, out-of-nowhere scares.

4.  Claire’s inhaler.  There were a number of scenes showing her using her inhaler, to the point where they all but telegraphed the ending.  This was the exact opposite of subtle.

5.  Some of the logic at the end of the movie.  They say things like, “We need to get out of this hotel,” then spend a couple minutes milling around the lobby.  I understand that you’re waiting for someone, but you should probably just wait outside.  There were a handful of moments like this at the ending, and they were all maddening.

6.  The ending.  Even leaving out the terrible logic employed, the ending was downright comical.  The ghosts were ridiculous.  If there had been a sense of building terror throughout the movie, the ending could have been very good.  But, since there was none of that, it was just boring.  It was just crazy stuff happening for the sake of having crazy stuff happen, not because there was an actual build-up to it. 

Final thoughts:

West knows how to make a movie look good, but doesn’t know how to make a good movie.  I’m holding out hope that he learns.  He was listed as writer/director/editor of this film.  He needs to scale back a bit.  Work with a co-writer and co-editor.  He seems like he’s very close to making something amazing, but he’s missing a key ingredient somewhere.

Inside Shadows

Short synopsis (from the film’s website):

When a young couple move into a converted shop, they are filled with excitement and ideas as to how they will make the house their own.  But it would appear the property is still clinging to its past, and unbeknown to them they are living inside its shadows.

My thoughts:

Having recently watched The Orphanage (again), The Awakening, and The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh, it seems clear that I’m a sucker for a slow-developing ghost story.  This really isn’t a surprise, but it’s something that is reinforced with each movie I watch.

Inside Shadows fits comfortably into that genre.  Calling it a slow-developing ghost story is a completely accurate description.  It may even be even slower moving than the aforementioned films, which is really saying something, seeing as how none of those movies move at a breakneck pace.  It’s very good once it gets moving, but it takes a little while to get to that point.  It would be extremely easy to lose focus before the good stuff kicks in.  The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh was slow, but it had a sense of tension that started early and kept up throughout the entire film.  There was none of that here.  This was more like Entrance: a slow-building movie that doesn’t really even try to build tension until late. 

Once it gets going, it’s pretty good.  And there are a handful of moments that hint at the upcoming insanity.  They do a pretty good job at teasing it.  But, like I said, it would be pretty easy to lose interest before it gets to that point, especially if you’re not in the right mood for this type of movie.  It’s less a “slow burn” and more “lighting fireworks with punk sticks”.  

Even when the craziness started, I had a couple issues with it.  They felt the need to give a big musical blast every time the ghost appeared for an instant.  It was somewhat reminiscent of the musical goosing we got when Michael Myers showed up in Halloween, but this less subtle.  It was extremely distracting, and completely unnecessary.  Seeing a shadowy figure appear in the background is startling by itself; there’s no need to throw it in our face.

I also had a pretty major problem with the decision-making of some of the characters late in the film.  For spoiler reasons, I can’t really get into the specifics.  Suffice it to say that a couple characters had some highly dubious logic late in this film.  It almost ruined the movie for me.

Overall, I would say that I enjoyed this movie, but I didn’t love it like I hoped I would.  Superficially, it suffers from the same problems that plague a lot of low-budget movies: mainly, poor lighting and inconsistent sound (although I will say that the sound was better here than a lot of low-budget movies I’ve seen).  I’ve never had a problem getting past those things as long as the story is good, but, if you have a problem with those things, you should probably stay away.

But, if you like a good ghost story, it’s definitely worth giving a shot.  It was pretty well-acted, and had a pretty cool style to it.  Pick a quiet night, shut off all the lights, and dive in.

Rating: 3/5

Inside Shadows is now available on VOD.  Check it out here.

Poltergeist

I can't remember the last time I had seen this movie.  High school, I guess.  Considering I graduated in 1998, that was a long time ago.  I remembered the very end - what happened to the house - but that was it.  Pretty much every other detail escaped me.  I even forgot that Carol Anne was taken, and that's one of the central plots of the movie.
So, while I had seen this movie, it felt like I was watching it for the first time.

There were some odd goofy moments, and some of the special effects felt dated, but I thought this movie holds up pretty well.  It wasn't quite as creepy as I had remembered it, but there were still a number of moments that made my skin crawl.

A solid movie.  I won't wait 15+ years to watch it again.

The Conjuring

Description from Netflix:

Based on true events, this spine-chiller tells the story of a New England family who begins having encounters with spirits in their farmhouse, and the paranormal experts who help them do battle with the supernatural forces.

Notable actors: Ron Livingston, Lili Taylor, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson

My thoughts:

It took me a month to finally get out to see this movie.  Because of that, the hype had reached insane levels.  It's currently sitting at 86% at Rotten Tomatoes, which is almost unheard of for a horror movie.

Combine that hype with the pre-release marketing machine ("rated R for being toooooo scary"), and I went into this movie with a cynic's heart and a critical eye.

I hated the opening with Annabelle, the creepy doll (I assume she was called Annabelle because she was shaped like a...she's the belle of the ball).  Hated it.  (I thought it was as nose as the Anne on plain’s face.)  I could see what they were doing: using a creepy scene to set up the rest of the movie.  But, for me, it didn't really work.  I feel like the "creepy inanimate object" trope has run its course in horror.  It no longer scares me.  The implication of what was going on with the doll was a cool idea (demon trying to enter our world through a conduit), but the entire opening wasn't really creepy for me, no matter how hard they tried to make it so.

I bet she sings a killer version of "We Three Kings"

Plus, I kind of felt like Wan was nudging me in the ribs.  "Hey.  Remember how I directed Saw and Dead Silence with those dolls?  You remember that?  Wasn't that awesome?"  And I never want anyone reminding me that Dead Silence exists.  There were also a few very Wan-like moments involving pale, ghostly figures turning their heads slowly and opening their mouths wide.  But, since this was a James Wan joint, I could pretty much count on at least one of these scenes showing up, and it was pretty easy to see it coming.

Beyond that, this opening scene wasn't so much a set-up as it was a blueprint for how the rest of the movie would play out.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaan

And, really, that was my problem with a lot of this movie.  A lot of the major plot points are telegraphed pretty early on.  They linger on certain objects for too long, or have a conversation about the object.  They have all these tiny little exposition scenes throughout the movie, the sole purpose of which seems to be to tell us what is going to happen.  The actors did everything short of breaking the fourth wall to spell out exactly how future scenes would play out.

"And now for the end of the movie..."

Another huge problem had less to do with the movie itself, and more to do with the trailers.  They had a fantastic set-up to a great jump scare ("hide and clap"), but it was ruined because of the trailers.  That scene was in every trailer I saw.  Had I not seen the trailer, that scene probably would've had me jumping out of my seat.  But, since I knew it was coming, it was just kind of boring.  In fact, the entire 5 minutes leading up to that point were kind of boring, because I already knew how it was going to end.

Pop POP

I suppose this is partially my fault.  When I see a trailer for a new horror movie pop up, I should just close my eyes and block it out.  But that's not easy to do.  Still, I may go this route for You're Next.  That seems like it could be a solid movie with some good scares.  At this point, all I know is that there is a pig head involved.  It may just be a remake of Motel Hell.  I don't know.  I haven't looked into it.

Look at that guy.  Always standing and walking.

I have also found myself tiring of these "house isn't haunted, the people are haunted" type of movies.  For it being a somewhat recent development (the first movie I remember seeing like this was Paranormal Activity) a lot of movies seem to be jumping on this train.  On some level, I understand it.  If the house is haunted, the easy fix is "just move somewhere else".  (The Lutz's made their grand escape on a rickety motorboat.)

But, if it's the person who is haunted, there's no easy fix.  You can't run.  You have to try to beat it.  It raises the stakes for everyone involved.  Essentially, these filmmakers have combined haunted house movies and possession movies.

Again, this isn't a bad idea, and I have really liked some of these movies.  But, by this point, it seems a bit overused and predictable.  Maybe someone will come along and make a movie that reenergizes this particular subgenre.  But this is not that movie.

That's it for the negative stuff.  Now for the positive.

There was a pretty good feeling of dread throughout.  Even though I could see where the story was going, I still had the feeling that something was just around the corner.  That's not easy to sustain throughout the course of a movie, but Wan did that pretty well here.

There were also a couple of really good scares.  There was one in particular that really seemed to come out of nowhere.  It was really scary and extremely well done.  There were also a number of moments that, while not overly scary, still had me more than a little creeped out (there was a fantastic scene involving the wardrobe that pulled this off really well).

For the most part, I liked the actors involved.  They didn't necessarily raise the movie to another level, but they all played their characters well enough.  It was well-acted, even if some of the characters felt like they were lacking any substance (I love Ron Livingston as much - or more - than the next guy, but there was hardly anything behind his character).

"This is kind of weird, but it's like you almost miss that possession."

Overall, I enjoyed this movie, but I didn't love it as much as everyone else seemed to.  It was a pretty good haunted house/person movie that kept me entertained the entire time (opening 5 minutes excluded).  I felt like I was a bit more critical than normal going into this one because of all the hype it received.  If I went into it with no expectations, I'm sure I would have loved it.  As it was, it was a solid movie that I liked, but didn't love.

Rating: 3.5/5

This is a pick for Final Girl's Film Club.  Watch it, then head over to her blog to see what she (and others) have to say about this.

What Comes Next: Mama

Welcome to the first post in my new series, where I chronicle what I think would happen after the credits roll.  (If you’re curious as to how this idea came about – and why wouldn’t you be? – you can read my original post here.)

For my first post, I thought I would tackle Mama, mainly because it’s one of my favorite movies of the year, but I also left the theater wondering about a lot of the loose ends that were left dangling at the end.  (You can read my original review of Mama here.)

These posts are going to be extremely spoiler heavy.  So, if you haven’t seen Mama and don’t want to know how it ends, I suggest you stop reading now.    So I’ll just put a SPOILER ALERT here, and let you know that it applies to the entire post.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

First of all, I’d like to say a few words about the ending.  I know a lot of people had problems with the ending, but I kind of liked it.  I loved the build-up to it.  They make a big point of finding the bones of Mama’s lost child, and pretty much say that giving her those bones (and thus helping her to find the child she lost) will placate her.  This is a common theme in ghost stories.  To help the ghost move on, a wrong must be righted.  So they give Mama the bones of her child, and everything seems like it’s going to work out.  Mama changes from her freaky ghost figure into her freaky human figure.

But it doesn’t work.  She literally tosses the bones of her child aside in order to go after Lilly & Victoria.  Because Mama was crazy before she died, and even death can’t cure crazy.   

I loved that.  It took a scene we’ve seen hundreds of times and turned it on its head. 

Of course, I was a little sad when Mama ended up taking Lilly as a replacement, but the movie had been set up to show that, while Victoria had a real shot at fitting into society, Lilly never really had that chance.  So, while I was sad (if you’re not sad when an innocent child dies, there’s probably something wrong with you), I understood why it happened.

So…what comes next?

When the movie ends, Annabel, Lucas and Victoria seem poised to go on with their lives.  They’ll mourn Lilly, but they’ll try to get back to as normal a life as they can.  It’s not really a happy ending, but at least they didn’t all die.

But their lives probably won’t be good for very long.

On top of dealing with the death of a child, Annabel and Lucas are probably going away for the murder of Jean.  Who, on top of being the grandmother of Victoria and Annabel, was also the woman they went to court with for custody of the children.  The last time she is heard from, she is calling social services from outside the house of Annabel and Lucas, then proceeds to break into the house to get pictures that could show evidence of child abuse.  She is killed in the house by Mama, and her skeletal corpse ends up at the cabin where the girls were originally found.

Speaking of the cabin…

They are probably also on the hook for the disappearance of Lilly.  There’s evidence of all of them in the cabin, and yet they come back home with only one child.  Just because they’ll never find the body of Lilly (unless they just start looking for butterflies matching her description, which is highly unlikely in a police investigation) doesn’t mean she’s not presumed dead.  She went over the cliff and disappeared in the water.  It happens all the time.  Furthermore, the fact that Mama is no longer plaguing the family means that there’s no chance of her showing up and convincing an open-minded detective that all of this was the work of a ghost.  Mama is gone.  Along with her are the stories that paint Annabel and Lucas as innocent.

Last but not least, they’ll also be on the hook for the death of Dr. Dreyfuss, the psychiatrist.  He is killed in the cabin, and Annabel has a box of evidence stolen from his office in her house. 

With Annabel and Lucas in prison – and Jean dead – Victoria will most likely end up in foster care, which doesn’t bode well for her chances of living a normal life.  Even though she warmed up throughout the movie, her ties to reality were tenuous at best.  Without the constant presence of Annabel and Lucas in her life (the only people who know about Mama, so the only people who can really relate to her), she’ll probably crawl back deeper inside of herself, possibly going back to the feral state they found her in.  In a few years, it wouldn’t be a shock if she threw herself off that same cliff.  It’s grim, but that would more than likely be her fate.

It’s pretty depressing, but that appears to be where their story leads.

I welcome any comments that might add something else to this conversation.

Mama

Description from Netflix:
Two girls left to fend for themselves in the forest for five lonely years after the death of their mother find refuge in the home of their uncle.  But it soon becomes clear that the girls have not arrived alone in this woodsy supernatural thriller.

Notable actors: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

My thoughts:
I had wanted to see this as soon as it came out, but fate and timing did not allow it.  Thankfully, I was able to catch a matinee yesterday.
And I loved it.
It had the same kind of feel as The Orphanage (I know that's kind of a lazy comparison, seeing as how Del Toro has ties to both of them, but it doesn't mean that it's not accurate).  It had a great atmosphere throughout the entire film.  They really set the feeling of dread and overwhelming creepiness up pretty early, and it cast a shadow over the rest of the film.  Even in the slow moments, I couldn't help but feel a little tense.  They used a lot of wide shots, so I was always looking over the shoulder of the characters.  Looking for any movement at all.

It was a beautifully creepy movie, which is why the comparison to The Orphanage is so accurate.  Both movies are overwhelmingly eerie.  But, where The Orphanage only goes so far as to be "creepy", Mama hits the "downright scary" button a few times.  The Orphanage had some tense and scary moments, but nothing came close to the terror that Mama slung around.

I'm not ashamed to say that I jumped a few times during this movie.  There were times when I knew something was coming, and I still jumped.  And yet, I never felt that any of jumps were cheap scares.  They worked hard for them, and they delivered.  That's no easy feat.

The acting was terrific.  It's no surprise that Jessica Chastain was fantastic.  With as great as she is, it's kind of amazing that she's just now breaking out (she was also terrific in Lawless and Zero Dark Thirty).

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) was also great, though his role was a bit more limited than I thought it would be.

The real surprise here were the kids.  This movie relied heavily on them, and they pulled through.  They were amazing.  Megan Charpentier (Victoria) was outstanding.  She had an especially complex character to play, and she did a terrific job.  She was torn between her old life (with Mama) and her new life (with Annabel & Lucas).  She had to run a gauntlet of emotions, and she nailed all of them.
Even the actress who played young Victoria (Morgan McGarry) was terrific.  An adorable little kid.  And her dad was going to kill her.  Some people, man...

Isabelle Nelisse (Lilly) was also terrific.  Even though she had slightly less of a character (a feral child who never really seemed to grasp the concept of the real world), she was still terrific.  She had a simple innocence to her, and she played it perfectly.  Even with the overwhelming creepiness, there were still a lot of playful moments with Mama, and Lilly was at the heart of those.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the one massive complaint I've heard about this movie: the CGI of Mama. It's quite possible that I had heard so many negative comments about it that my expectations were lowered so far that the actual CGI couldn't possibly be as bad as my mind had made it out to be.
It could also be that I have recently made peace with CGI.  My deal with CGI is this: as long as the movie is good, I don't really care if the CGI isn't amazing.  I refuse to let bad CGI kill a good movie for me.  Now, if it's a bad movie with bad CGI, all bets are off.  But less-than-stellar CGI is not a deal breaker for me.
Also, I really don't think the CGI was that bad.  Not enough to distract from the creepiness of the movie, anyway.

This has nothing to do with CGI, but I really love this shot

One small fact before I end this review.  The part of Mama was played by an actor by the name of Javier Botet.  He is a horrifying man.  All those weird, disjointed stances Mama took?  All Botet.  Which is simultaneously amazing and horrifying.  (For the record, Botet also played the role of Nina Medeiros in all of the [Rec] movies.)

Overall, I really, really loved this movie.  As I mentioned before, it has a great atmosphere, which gives the entire film a creepiness that never lets up.  I really loved everything about this movie.  I'm already looking forward to watching it again when it comes out on DVD.  This could easily become my favorite movie of the year.

I have a handful of questions about the ending of the movie, and the fallout that would occur.  I don't want to bring them up here, as they would include a lot of spoilers, none of which I necessarily want to bring up here.  Very soon, I'll either do a post about the fallout from certain horror movies (using Zombie's Halloween 1 & 2 as a guide), or start up a discussion blog filled with spoilers (I doubt this will happen, as I doubt enough people read this blog to necessitate another one starting up).  If anyone has a preference, leave a comment.

Rating: 5/5

I can't end this review without a few words about Jessica Chastain's character, Annabel.  Her character goes through a pretty big transformation as well: from a punk-rocker who cheers when she finds out she's not pregnant to a protective and loving mother for Victoria and Lilly.  (Even her wardrobe changed: from low-cut tank-tops to, eventually, a turtleneck sweater.)
It is her punk-rocker side that I want to point out.  They spent a little bit of time on it, and it kind of made me laugh.  My favorite part was when her and Lucas were trying to get custody of the kids.  Part of the case against them featured the statement, "Annabel is in a band."  Granted, the point was more, "how can they support these kids when they don't make any money?", but it sounded more like, "She can't take care of these kids...she plays the devil's music!"

Here are a few pictures showing her transformation (and, again, featuring some of the wide shots this film used).

The Amityville Horror

Description from Netflix:
This hair-raising remake of the 1979 horror hit depicts the ordeal of the Lutz family, whose new home has a gory past and a legacy of demons.  Before long, dad George is being haunted by nightmares and daughter Chelsea is seeing phantoms.

Notable actors: Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, Rachel Nichols, Philip Baker Hall, Chloe Grace Moretz

My thoughts:
I love this movie.  It's one of my favorite modern horror movies.  Ryan Reynolds gives a great performance as George Lutz; a man who is slowly being taken over by the demons in the house.  He alternates between threatening and annoyed.  One minute he's making his step-son hold up wood while he chops ("We're friends, aren't we?  We're having fun.").  The next minute he's sneering at a touching moment between mother and father.  ("What's wrong with this family?")  The next minute he's trying to kill his entire family.  I can understand.  I've had bad days, too.

It's creepy.  It's funny.  It moves at a good pace.  After the first viewing, the jump-scares aren't scary, but they still work well within the movie.  Nothing really feels cheap or cheesy.  (Okay, maybe the very last scene does, but that's it.)

It's a good haunted house movie.  If you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out.

Rating: 5/5

The Sentinel

Description from Netflix:
Model Alison Parker gets a great deal on a Brooklyn, NY apartment - but there's just one catch: it's also the gateway to Hell, and she's on the invite list.  Universal's answer to The Exorcist features a stellar supporting cast.

Notable actors: Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Sarandon, Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D'Angelo, Tom Berenger

My thoughts:
First of all, that's a lot of famous people.  Granted, they didn't all have large roles (for instance, Jeff Goldblum was barely in it, and Christopher Walken only had 1 or 2 lines), but it's a pretty impressive cast.  That's without even mentioning the main girl, played by Cristina Raines.  I had never seen her in anything before, but she did a great job.  I wish I had seen her in something before.

The description calls it "Universal's answer to The Exorcist", but that doesn't seem quite right.  If anything, the mood felt more like Rosemary's Baby than anything.  Except I enjoyed it more than Rosemary's Baby, because it moved along at a better pace.
It had a really good atmosphere, and there was a sense of mystery that drove the movie.  I could kind of sense where the movie was going, but it took a much different path than I thought it would.

Chris Sarandon and his awesome mustache

I watched this movie because Ricky Butler talks about it in The Burbs, and I realized I had never seen it.  Besides that reference, I didn't know too much about it.  It was well worth a watch.  It really felt more like a mystery than a horror movie, but the last 10 minutes were legitimately creepy.
I had a few problems with the ending, which I will talk about here.  Even though this came out in 1977, I'm still going to throw a "spoiler alert" on it.

[SPOILER]
Alison was a model, and a pretty high-profile on at that.  She was in dozens of print ads, and quite a few television ads, including one that seemed to be getting quite a bit of air time recently.  Pretty much everyone she met in the movie recognized her.  Yet, at the end of the movie, she becomes the sentinel to guard against the gates of Hell, and no one missed her?  Surely someone would have been looking for her?  Her best friend?  Her employers?  I just don't believe that a popular model can just drop off the face of the Earth without anyone looking for her.
[END SPOILER]

If you haven't seen this yet, I recommend that you check it out.  It's currently on Netflix Instant.

Rating: 4/5

Christopher Walken: Demon Detective

Sinister

Description from Netflix:
After moving to a new town, a true-crime writer discovers a cache of videotapes depicting brutal murders that took place in the very house he just bought.  As he tries to solve the mystery behind the crimes, a sinister force threatens his own family.

Notable actors: Ethan Hawke, Fred Dalton Thomas

My thoughts:
We went to see this in the theater last night.  I saw a preview for it before Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and it looked really creepy.  So I've been looking forward to this for a long time.



Through the first half, I was afraid that it was going to turn into Insidious.  It had the same kind of feel, so I just assumed it was going to hit a point that just lost me.  I assumed it was going to show the monster for too long and he was going to look ridiculous, or that there would be some hokey explanation for it.  But that point never hit.
There was a scene a little more than an hour in that seemed a little goofy and out of place, but it didn't kill the movie.  I was already significantly invested by that point, and it didn't completely derail the movie.

This movie was pretty creepy, but it was really more unsettling than anything.  We sit with Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke's character) as he watches films that show the murder of a series of families.  The movie actually opens with a family of 4 being hung from a tree.  It was pretty disturbing, and definitely helped to set the stage for the rest of the movie.

It was pretty creepy throughout.  It was a bit slow at times, but I was never bored.  Even in those slow times, I was ready for something to happen at any time, so I was always on edge.  They did a great job at setting an atmosphere of dread, and keeping it throughout the entire film.  In less skilled hands, this movie could easily have been very boring.  As it is, I thought this was very well done.
There was even a character brought in for comic relief that I really enjoyed.  It was a nice break from the crushing dread, but it didn't completely destroy the mood of the movie.

I had couple issues with the movie (minor plot holes, mainly), and I wasn't crazy about the ending.  But, overall, I really liked this movie.  Very creepy.  Very tense.  Very well done.

Rating: 4.5/5

Death Tunnel

I watched Death Tunnel because it was filmed at Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, KY.  Waverly Hills is famous for being one of the most haunted places in the United States (or, at the very least, in the Eastern region of the United States).  Living in Lexington, KY, this intrigued me.  I hadn’t heard great things about the movie, but how often do you get to see a movie filmed in a haunted building in your very own state?  (Since that is an oddly specific set of criteria, I would guess the answer is “not very often”.)

Waverly Hills Sanatorium 

The set-up was cool enough.  They took a cue from the actual history of Waverly Hills and tweaked it to make it more sinister.  Here is the basic story of Waverly Hills: it was used in the early 1900s to treat a massive outbreak of tuberculosis.  A 500 foot tunnel was built underneath the building as a way to easily bring in supplies.  They weren’t able to treat the tuberculosis, so a lot of patients died (at its peak, they estimate one patient death every other day).  In an attempt to keep the morale up (apparently seeing dead bodies being rolled out a few times every week didn’t do much to keep spirits up), they used the supply tunnel as a way to discreetly remove dead bodies from the building.  And there is the (very) abridged history of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

The "death tunnel"

For Death Tunnel, the name has been changed to Vanguard Sanatorium, named after Richard J. Vanguard, who opened the sanatorium and worked there as a doctor.  As I said, they keep the same basic history (used for tuberculosis patients, used the tunnel to remove the dead, etc.), but they add some stuff.  For instance, Richard Vanguard experimented on the patients, so the death count was significantly higher.  The tunnel was used more as a way to hide the number of deaths from the outside world, instead of boosting morale.  And so on.  Bottom line: Richard Vanguard was an evil man.

So that’s the set-up.  That doesn’t sound too bad, right?  The pieces are in place for a pretty good movie.

The story isn’t terrible.  Five college girls (required to wear “provocative nighttime attire”) end up participating in an initiation called “Truth or Scare”.  They have hoods placed on their heads, and they’re all placed in separate rooms (well, two of them share a room, but whatever).  The repeated mantra is, “Five girls, five floors, five hours.”  The first one to make it out wins.  (It’s never quite clear what they win.  It’s not entrance to a sorority.  As near as I could tell, they win an invitation to a party house.)  They are also told that they will be encountering “five ghosts”.  There are cameras all over the house.  It’s a set-up.  A prank.  A way for a couple guys to see five scantily clad girls run around for a few hours. 

And what a plan it was

But then the ghosts show up, and people start dying (the mantra changes with each death, of course.  “Four girls…”).  They discover that each girl who was chosen had a connection to the sanatorium (their relatives were patients or nurses, mainly).  They begin assuming the lives and memories of their relatives, and we find out a little more about the sanatorium with each girl.  There’s also a guy involved: his name is Richie, he’s one of the guys who set up Truth or Scare, and he’s the love interest of final girl.

And Richie is NOT happy to be there

It should be noted that one of the ghosts is a large figure in a gas mask who pushes around a gurney, wears a rubber apron, and speaks in a muffled, gravely voice.  He carts off the dead bodies, which brought to mind the hearse driver in Dead End.

Time to collect the bodies...

So, basically, girls try to escape.  Girls get possessed.  Girls die.  And one girl gets naked and takes a shower for no real reason.  Because, when you find yourself in a haunted sanatorium, the first thing you should do is take a shower.

Who could've guessed it would turn into a haunted blood shower?

None of that looks terrible. 

But here’s the thing: it absolutely was.

There were so many things wrong with this movie, I’m not quite sure where to start.  From time to time, there would be a random flash-forward that accomplished nothing but confusion.  They pulled me out of the movie, spun me around, and put me back in.  There was no rhyme or reason to these.  And they happened pretty often.

This is how the movie started.  Before we met her, we saw her kill face

The motivation of the characters never made sense.  Why did they participate in this?  Was it seriously just to be able to frequent a college party house? 

The acting was terrible.  It might have been some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen Galaxy Invader countless times).  As near as I could tell, they just grabbed a random assortment of beautiful(ish) people off the streets and said, “Can you go to this haunted hospital and read these words?  Thanks!”

Beyond the fact that these actors were terrible, most of them were asked to play two parts.  “Can you play a normal college kid AND an insane suicidal nurse?”  That’s a recipe for disaster right there.

Krazee-Eyez Tori

The writing was laughably bad.  I jotted down a couple of my favorite lines.  But, for every line I noted, there were a dozen that were nearly as good.

-          “That’s where who died?”  “MEEEEEE!”

-          “ You make me sick.  Now I make you sick.”  (This was pretty much delivered exactly the same as, “You don’t bring me down.  I bring me down,” from Jerry McGuire.  Except this was all muffled because it was said by the gas mask guy.  So, basically, it sounded like a less jolly Bane.)

-          “Something in this place remembers.  And it’s f***ing pissed off!”

-          “Vanguard said the only way out was death.  The only way out is the death tunnel.”

And so on, and so forth.

The “ghosts” were pretty ridiculous.  Two pale naked chicks just kinda roaming the halls.  A girl who just wanted to play catch with a ball.  The evil, scene-chomping Richard Vanguard.  They didn’t have many special effects, which was good, because the ones they did have were awful.

What I’m saying is, this movie was awful.  But it was awful in an entertaining way.  I can see myself watching this again if the setting is right (with a group of like-minded individuals and beer).  If you’re looking for a good movie, you’re out of luck.  But, if you’re looking for an entertaining movie, you could do worse than this.

Rating (quality): 1/5

Rating (entertainment value): 3.5/5

Just for fun, here are the girls: Devon, Elizabeth, Ashley, Tori and Heather.  (Their first initials spell “death”.  Get it?!)

Devon

Elizabeth

Ashley

Tori

Heather