Forget Me Not (2009)

Friends: till death do us part

A group of overindulgent teens are living up the party life after high school when they decide to return to the cemetery they used to play a spooky but innocent game at. One person pretends to be a ghost, while everyone else hides and then once caught that person turns into another ghost to go after the rest--last one alive/not tagged wins. There they meet a mysterious girl their age who wants to play, only to be seen jumping over a cliff by another girl named Sandy as soon as she won. She's nowhere to be found, until she shows up to take out those that awakened her in a series of gruesome accidents where each person that she kills everyone else forgets all except Sandy. There are some flashbacks to when Sandy was young and had a bff named Angela who she used to exclusively play with until boys and other more adventurous kids entered the picture. This starts out with some fun and games until Sandy starts to crack up and go into hysterics from none of her friends believing her while certain aspects of their lives get altered like a butterfly effect once someone else is removed from the picture.

This is treated like somewhat of a formula where the bad guy systematically takes out screaming and confused victims that don't have a fighting chance to save their own skin. Once the villains show up, you know their fate is sealed. Like a slasher film: what's going to happen to the characters is predictable but how they get it just before that point comes with some variation. A share of the attacks occur in an isolated or cornered area away from their friends, which makes nowhere safe including walking around in broad day light. Though the only character aware of that is Sandy--even then it's not all put together yet--while the others go about their merry way none the wiser which takes away some of the imminent danger and omnipresence of it all. They're superficial characters that represent a pretty face and body that live life on the edge and in turn get knocked off without a care except for the waste of genes. These are some strange and somewhat unique looking villains--a blend of CG and make-up--that shake, twitch, growl and hiss with gaping mouths and sizable teeth. They don't seem inherent to this particular story but that might just be to keep the viewer from being able to wrap their head around them.

The cinematography, with a crisper picture quality and some wider angles, makes this seem higher budget than it really is. The cast interacts somewhat naturally with each other like they could really be friends, even if they only come with a general outline and limited range: macho/slutty/drunk/high, then for a short period yell, plead or scream when their time comes. The underlying story is a neat idea itself about promises as a friend and then redemption for those that have been slighted in a highly elaborate game of pay back and revenge. Not to mention how it circles back in a roundabout way was an effective twist. What's disappointing is the concept is only taken so far when it doesn't have another driving point apart from including a share of filler scenes that show how these kids live on the wild side. It could have been more effective if they were clued in or have significant reasons to separate from the group and put themselves in danger than accidentally walking into it. Or show that they are more than mere acquaintences. Neither does it make this as thrilling as it could have been when the characters don't have much going for them or little to look forward to even when out of school. The expression "the world is yours for the taking" only took them as far as their parents' wallets, then over to the liquor and condom aisle at the local gas station. Are they missed? Probably not.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Tyler Oliver
Stars: Carly Schroeder, Brie Gabrielle, Cody Linley, Jillian Murray
Link: IMDB

The Familiar (2009)

Spirits love to torment priests and the innocent

This carries more of a specific Christian lesson and message for the reaffirming-your-faith type of supernatural drama/horror than giving in to more shocking theatrics for regular cinema goers as seen years ago in the '70s with the likes of "The Exorcist" with more effective results. This is the equivalent of their catering budget, so the actual filmmaking experience requires a share of compensating to get through it, not only for resources but also since they cut out a lot of the over-the-top scenarios or anything in the way of titillating to keep the messages more down-to-earth and positive when they arrive. It tries to play both sides of the fence and ends up not being able to share itself equally to where it would be entertaining and also carry something away for the watch.

Sam is a former small town pastor in Oklahoma that has nightmares from a supernatural incident that happened twenty five years ago. Sam and his childhood friend Charlie brought pentagram laced porno mags to their home with demonic results. Five years ago his wife Katherine died under unknown circumstances and he currently drinks away his sadness and sells and shoots guns. He hangs loose with Charlie, who's now the local jolly sheriff, and follows a simple routine until his now-grown-up sister-in-law Laura shows up at his front door step unannounced from wanting a change from city life. Laura is smug and overly confident to the point of stepping over her bounds. Sam turned his back on his faith along with those that want to help, including his friend, his father and his new house guest, though who's coming on strong to the point of literally filing in the cloths of her former sister that she had a falling out with.

Laura mentions her involvement with the Light Seekers: an alternative group that believes in spiritual presences. She's naive and thought one of the spirits was good until she says the name of Jesus and the presence reveals its true black colors with an omnipresent voice that shows its mocking scorn. Already in poor shape himself, Sam tries to help Laura who's beginning to stray but doesn't always have the insight or strength himself. Soon enough she starts to act differently and Sam being lonely gets blinded to the fact that she may be influenced by one of the bad spirits until he's in well over his head and has to make a life altering choice instead of turning his back and feeling sorry for himself. He turned to guns but found something he can't shoot.

"The Familiar" is a measly budget feature that dodges bigger special effects or grossly horrifying or shocking events but tries to instead establish its characters as regular people and have them go through self-destructive mistakes that the viewer might not have to. Yep, it's going to be a life lesson of sorts, which can be appreciated for an effort that carries meaning and relating points. Though what makes the experience a hard watch are the messages come on a little strong, despite a few that hold back or are balanced for the other side; which I'm sure this might still be slightly controversial in the head-stuck-in-the-book Christian community as a result, but nothing like "The Exorcist," for which author William Peter Blatty penned it from a Catholic perspective. At one point the film truly showed its budget when Sam commented to his father at how to stop the evil presence to then cueing "tension" filled music and their supposed "action" scene with boots just kicking over rocks that formed devilish signs. At least they know their limitations.

The message about partaking in premarital sex, looking at suggestive material and exposing your body on camera--no nudity here or actual events shown--are going to fall on deaf ears to a modern, sexually liberated person outside of a smaller town or religious setting already. Soon after giving in to impulses and temptations there are some appearances of random shadows or a creeping camera with red filters--none of which works towards making a viewer flinch, building tension or putting a fright into someone for the transgression. The impression is that a bad spirit is going to immediately show up next time you slip up (no pun intended), so you better watch out! The fear is in you! Compare this to actually showing the possible mistakes and effects and it might have partially gotten through I'd imagine more so. As is, it feels like a reconfirmation and pat on the back for those that abstain already.

The biggest issue here is it becomes a chore to watch as the pacing jumps back and forth and starts to retread over familiar ground. This moves along in a revolving circle that, instead of creating captivating drama or interesting scenarios, has tendency to drift along or jerk with some unsmooth transitions. Its sense of mystery doesn't always carry punch with how the wife actually died or who the elusive "cousin" Rallo is. This would have worked much better as a shorter feature as it feels padded and stretched out than being moment by moment engaging.

The dialogue feels obvious and the performances are stifled in areas as if they're playing catch up than always speaking their lines with command. When the dialogue isn't telling the viewer what to think or feel, the reverbed out piano montages with sad and extended violins typically cue up in case the tone or meaning was somehow missed. Bryan Massey, who plays Sam, doesn't carry his own with the various transitions of the story: little backing power with expressions, to then the next overstepping what was called for. How the character of Laura transforms from her normal self to possessed often comes with conflicting results. Instead of giving a gradual change over, it's not even made sure of which was ever which till a final blatant stand off scene where the spirit speaks through her and is more effective to capture the moment and your attention. But that might have been because whatever happened before it didn't stand out by much in comparison.

Rating: 3/10

Director: Miles Hanon
Stars: Bryan Massey, Laura Spencer, Jeff West
Link: IMDB

The Haunting (2009)

Moving to the outskirts never helped anyone's health

This gradually paced supernatural film from Spain gives a little twist on its own history and unfolds with a leaning more for human drama than popcorn entertainment. "The Haunting" is also a deeply involved mystery with several, sometimes cluttered layers that eventually narrow into a main point. It gives more subtle hints than outright telling the viewer what is going on at first to the point of a tinkle or a text message later and you could have missed a key element till they re-explain in the latter portion of the film.

Blanca is found barely alive by priests in a room with others dead around her. She awakens from a coma at an elderly age and gets released by a priest named Miguel de Azpeitia in the sanatorium she's been cared for at. Azpeitia picks up an old film clipping on the ground that Blanca dropped and confronts another priest about feeling guilty for sinning from a prior incident involving a prostitute who could produce miracles but was locked away against her will, only to end up killing herself. Meanwhile a maternity ward doctor named Francesca moves with her husband Pedro, months old baby Pablo and daughter Rosa to a large country manor that was used by a recently deceased bishop called Juan Lorenzo Prada but was a school some 50 years before that. Her husband is worried about her obsessively protective nature of the baby. He's at work while she stays home on leave, only for her to become worse and worse when she claims to hear unexplainable noises and has random hallucinations of little girls that lead her to the attic where something of a dark nature happened. The daughter and Blanca confirm her suspicions, though her husband and boss think that it's her mental health causing her to act erratic from someone lost that was close to her ten years past. Francesca believes differently and contacts Azpeitia through Blanca who looks into it with an investigation to unlock the truth and to possibly absolve himself from his past sin.

"The Haunting" deals with religious politics and hypocrisy in how saints come to be named and miracles made official to the public. The behind the scenes process is selective to the point of manipulation and misconduct. The film is also about letting go of someone from your past, along with trust from mother to son, to then husband to wife even when the odds are stacked against. The movie has some predictability and more than a few cliches but it also manages to throw in some unique qualities and red herrings to its story--some confusing, others a nice diversion--to where it will go next. Though it doesn't always treat its material as edge-of-your-seat gripping or more dangerous when something bad does happen. It seems like Francesca is more helped and warned than harmed to the point of dodging any physically threatening elements and aiming more towards righting those wronged. There are still a few confrontations but the film is more laid back in its delivery of how it gradually unfolds with a sense for drama and mystery than outright horror. It still gives enough pauses and layers to give room to think and develop even if it lacks a continually nervous or jarring nature. The acting--in Spanish--is adequate and believable but the weaving story and well-timed direction seem to be doing a little more of the leg work than having them lug this solely on their backs.

This carries a formula of the upstarting-family-moves-into-a-haunted-house subgenre--ominous signs, local priest, random appearances with ghosts pointing in certain directions instead of telling what they want, along with writing in blood on the walls and all--but it comes with its own individual backstory and characters that feel like people instead of devices put into scenarios to just produce a scream. This is a borderline case of an R rating with one sexually suggestive situation and a few scenes involving blood. Ghost fans just looking to turn their hair white might be disappointed as this isn't outright terrifying as it's more made to be steadily evolving and intriguing with more revelations than sensations. This still has a few chills and a certain secretive atmosphere that's for your eyes only till the truth is unlocked...but can it ever really be with such powerful opposition on both sides of the fence? There are some eerie sounding choirs accompanied with an organ that can be heard in the background that are more demonic than divine sounding. This uses a neat idea to connect scenes of past and present with old, scratchy film reels from the Franco era that gives a little twist on Spanish history that can be appreciated by others not from said country as well.

Rating: 7/10

Director: Elio Quiroga (The Dark Hour)
Link: IMDB

Fragile (2005)

A determind night nurse in a troubled hospital

Amy Nicholls, an American, is called in to replace another night nurse named Susan who unexpectedly left. They're in the process of moving supplies and eventually patients out of Mercy Falls Children's Hospital on the Isle of Wight in southern England. Things are rushed, people are passive and a share just want to clear out and finalize the whole fiasco after a train accident created a delay. They're on a skeleton crew with Amy, the night doctor Robert and an orderly to look after eight remaining special case children, along with a nurse named Helen in alternate shifts.

The old building gives in to some creaks and malfunctions that are at first coincidental and logically explained. Though a trouble-making child named Maggie claims it was a mechanical girl named Charlotte that she uses alphabet blocks to communicate to, with the staff thinking she's just bored and isolated with no parents to care for her. After getting convinced from an incident herself, Amy looks into the records of Simon--a boy who suspiciously broke his bones--which leads her back to Susan and two psychics. With risk of losing her job or sanity, Amy edges on as a catalyst because she believes that something doesn't want to let them leave and to make them suffer despite everyone else brushing the growing number of incidents under the rug with excuses and false reassurances. When more turn over to uncovering the truth, it changes into a race against time to save the children before the deteriorating hospital consumes them.

"Fragile" eventually works into a thriller like pacing for its latter portion with a well timed little twist and some tragedy and sentimental moments. The rest of this English and Spanish made picture flows well enough and has a balance to all sides with events progressively moving along step by step without jumping ahead. Though it starts to feel somewhat like a basic and straightforward formula in areas. Partly of the one random, supernatural occurrence at a time type, and the other part of the "I have to do what's right no matter the odds" kind that's usually seen in murder or political thrillers where morals come into play and the person acts as a crusader. Some areas play out with some predictability and you can depend on it since its upkeep is somewhat simplistic and measured out to the point of having little fat hanging or drifting scenes. Though to its credit, it's a movie that doesn't get muddled or look back and retread, but instead manages to maintain a forward outlook till the growing tension can be released and resolved. Expecting something brand new here and you might be disappointed as it's more tried and true with a few aspects and characters shuffled around.

The abandoned second floor is a dismal place with grime and deterioration. The creepy looking villain that fittingly lives there--that's in the physical form instead of CGI with various contraptions and contorted face--looks effective despite a short amount of screen time. The co-stars are typically set up with specific archetypes--stern boss, shoulder to cry on, information guy--and do their parts well enough since they're not always required to step over with a wide arc of range. Though Yasmin Murphy, who plays Maggie, carries a distinct voice for her age and manages to transition from a bored brat to sympathetic for her ailment and abandonment situation. Elena Anaya, as Helen, feels the most realistic person--as opposed to a caricature or cinematic invention--as a foreigner in another country with a back and forth temperament of the pushed around employee who's job gets on her nerves. Calista Flockhart starts out somewhat neutral and almost comatose--on purpose or not is hard to say since she's popping pills here. She has a few break out scenes from her lull that go from cracked up and stressed out, to then eventually able to carry the strength of those around her as a commanding hero of sorts.



Rating: 7/10

Director: Jaume Balaguero (The Nameless, Darkness)
Stars: Calista Flockhart, Richard Roxburgh, Elena Anaya, Gemma Jones, Colin McFarlane, Susie Trayling
Link: IMDB

The Tomb (2009)

Sleepy actors in atmospheric settings

This is an old fashioned horror romance loosely adapted by an unknown director and John "The Crow" Shirley from an Edgar Allan Poe short story. It also combines primitive science and magic involving a deceitful woman who wants to defeat death at whatever the cost and against whoever gets in her way that's living.

A literature professor named Jonathan, despite being engaged to an attentive blonde named Rowena, gets seduced by an exotic dark-haired eastern European woman called Ligeia Romanova who sits in during his lectures due to a supposed fascination with his work. She's conducting a darker kind of research on her own at the university to cure an ailment called Black Death that's causing her to become progressively weaker and that much closer to dying. Through witchcraft she beckons him to her apartment with indulgences of lust and absinthe, all the while with a grieving fiancee at home and a past lover for Ligeia who was assisting her with fresh corpses beforehand. They marry and Jonathan dips into his deep pockets to purchase back the Romanova Manor in Ukraine that was once in Ligeia's family's name. There Ligeia tries to perfect her diabolical experiments but is getting weaker, which leads to her hold becoming less strong on Jonathan. Suspicions arise from both their caretaker Vaslov, his teenage daughter Loreli and Jonathan himself. He starts to see clearer and brings Rowena back into his life, though Ligeia has one last attempt up her sleeve that might put everyone's life in danger.

The main aspect concentrated on here is the love triangle with everything else coming second or being brought up and not developed at all. There's no strong hero or even a steady character to crutch yourself on as a viewer with the exception of the fiancee Rowena for relating points, though who's not always on screen. The direction, dialogue and performances are hit and miss. The script feel underdeveloped by only giving limited range to the characters and making them seem more like plot devices moved from one place to the next. Jonathan doesn't pose much of a struggle or create a challenge by incorporating a fight between both sides of being entranced and shaking it off. Even the unsurety of Ligeia if she loves him or not--since she keeps him around while killing off everyone else on whim--isn't always given enough subtleties to make you second guess if she's true or not. There's little mystery past a certain point and the pacing is up and down, with the beginning transitions being rushed and not giving enough room to authentically develop the characters. The middle section drags with some filler material that doesn't carry any tension or captivation but more or less padding to the simplistic story. Not to mention there are flashbacks that return to a scene that happened earlier as if they didn't have a life beforehand. This picks up the flow for its wrap up, though its impact was somewhat abrupt and anticlimactic.

Sofya Skya, as Ligeia, no doubt brings a certain enchanting beauty but her portrayal is somewhat neutral in that she doesn't always bring more to herself that would be intriguing past a certain point. Her voice is often flat and her degrees of facial expressions limited, as if she's not affected by anything around her than indifferent. Wes Bentley is in a trance half of the time, giving a stupid and confused grin while walking around like a love sick zombie. Both Michael Madsen and Eric Roberts play unexceptional, one-dimensional parts with Madsen the drunk, layabout father of Rowena and Roberts the humble caretaker of the Romanova Manor.

As a horror film, this isn't scary or frightening but there's still a certain atmosphere at points to where the settings are periodically shot in between scenes. The R rating was most likely for cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption than anything else along the lines of gore or nudity. This was supposed to be more of a character driven tale with the technical science and supernatural aspects grazed over for more of a tone and to concentrate on human tragedy. Except the strength of the film ended up being the set designs, cinematography and music than the performances and dialogue. It's as if they don't always switch out of a lower gear, causing their performances to only break even across the board instead of doing something that expresses dramatic emotion or to remember them by as a specific personality instead of merely an actor reading lines.

Rating: 3/10

Director: Michael Staininger
Stars: Wes Bentley, Kaitlin Doubleday, Sofya Skya, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts, Mackenzie Rosman
Link: IMDB

Dark House (2009)

Generic title #54,732: "Dark Review"

Fourteen years ago a young girl leaves her two friends outside the gate while she bravely struts her proud self into the Darrode house for foster children. Instead of being able to go back outside to call her friends chicken, she finds dead kids her age everywhere and a woman grinding her hands to the bone in the garbage disposal. Present day and Claire's shrink suggests that she returns in order to let go. By sheer luck, she gets her chance when an eccentric, cane-wielding man named Walston hires her and the advanced acting class she's in to perform as various horrific characters for a haunted house tour in the Darrode residence.

Claire muzzles her past fears that spring up in the form of hallucinations while her everything's-a-joke acting companions don't take any of the over-the-top theatrics seriously. Walston unveils a system with computer generated holograms that are positioned around the house that look real to the new performers. It acts as a cover up since the movie wastes little time stating it's haunted by the past red-headed care taker Mrs. Darrode herself when she infects the computer system with a ghostly virus. Meanwhile, two reporters are given a tour first to test the effectiveness with authentic looking results. A glitch causes the holograms to turn physical and go on a sadistic killing rampage with the people trapped inside.


The initial idea is to take haunted houses to the next level with physically painless interactions that get as close to the person as it can get--and then from there if they go haywire. Though the film doesn't fully step outside of being a gimmick to get inside a specific fear, often jumping right into them with a cheap and momentary shock that has no staying power. The bloody scenes fall flat as a result. Not to mention the house itself isn't always given distinctions besides a certain hallway or even made out to be alive with the exception of windows opening and closing on their own. The story is ambitious with varying tones, characters and events but then handles a share of it like an underachiever by not taking it with much merit. The film closes on an ambiguous note but has too many conflicting clues as to what it could be while not balancing an intriguing middle. The cast is full of caricatures and their interactions are superficial at best--goth, comic, jock, ditsy, damaged--and the message about religion being put down kids throats had no punch since it was just thrown in and treated second to every other hollow distraction.

The tone of the picture goes in and out of seriousness with Claire trying to cope to then being purposely cheesy with hammy lines and jokes in between. It's often overly fun to the point of being goofy, making it a challenge to feel anything substantial when the actual horror comes into play. It seems too self-aware of its own shortcomings: pointing them out and doing them anyway, as if it was more doctoring its story than being on top. Meghan Maureen McDonough, as a co-host with lesbian tendencies towards the hot blonde, had some effective comic timing despite the picture never knowing which tone it wanted to project. Jeffrey Combs actually feels like he knows his lines front and back and treats his role as Walston with more care and personality than the younger cast. Diane Salinger was impressive and ends up being the best thing about the whole experience despite her limited amount of dialogue. She doesn't hold back in the slightest with a truly psychotic portrayal--contorted facial expressions and demonic voice and all to make any man out there with a pulse impotent--as the red-headed school teacher with a fiery temper.



Rating: 3/10

Director: Darin Scott (Caught Up)
Stars: Jeffrey Combs, Meghan Ory, Diane Salinger
Link: IMDB

Yoga Hakwon (2009)

Beauty at a cost

This takes over the spot for the strangest movie I've seen involving yoga. The last contender of "Kung Fu vs Yoga" included dislocating limbs and thought-to-be-impossible moves against traditional martial arts. "Yoga Hakwon," on the other hand, is a supernatural horror-mystery from South Korea that involves a group of women who want to achieve even more beauty than they already have. They're so blinded by vanity that the light at the end of the tunnel they perceive is really as dark as they come.

A woman named Kim Hyo-jung is caught up in the superficial world around her, whether it be selling lingerie on the home shopping network in Korea or dining out with acquaintances who are moving up in the world whichever way they can. There's a side of her that wants to be genuine, though currently the pressure of her friends' influences causes her to reevaluate her life. She throws a tantrum at her nice and laid back boyfriend and then gets fired from her job due to the other female co-host being more attractive than anything else. She confronts a woman named Sun-hwa who said it was out of her hands but then recommends a yoga studio owned by a secretive woman named Kahn Mi-hi--who was a former actress known for her beauty but carried a terrible voice--that might be able to help Hyo-jung with an intensive training class. So far so good...

Their instructor Na-ni tells them about a strict set of rules involving outside contact, mirrors, unauthorized food, showers and the usual confidentiality agreement. They put full trust into this unheard of studio without even a sign out front, only to act selfish towards one another to win a process involving seven chakras and a Kundalini that leads to perfectly balanced beauty that only one of the select ladies can achieve. "They say that she opened up her Kundalini..." was a line intended to be mysterious but not translated with the best sounding interests. By the first lesson it's evident they're in some kind of dark cult with supernatural powers over their new followers that cause them to perform complex yoga moves in a trance and fall victim every time they break the rules that were thought to be just for show. South Korea becomes even smaller when Hyo-jung's boyfriend gets linked up when visiting a director named Kang who casted Kahn Mi-hi, the owner of the Yoga studio, in his movies. He's not sure where his girlfriend went and proceeds to investigate, leading him to a story involving a tragic incident that happened on a movie called "Shadow of Youth" where rivals Eun-shil and Kahn Mi-hi played opposite.

The major strength of "Yoga Hakwon," or "Yoga" in the US, is its mood and some built up scares that are more abstract than logical. The yoga angle starts to show its limitations where a share of the film takes place outside of the studio setting, only to kick it up and save a share for its highly atmospheric closer that effectively plays on surface sensations no doubt but also needs footnotes to make sense of. Before that point other threads are introduced to compensate or to divert your attention. This jumps back and forth with a variety of story arcs but ends up moving around so much as to lose context. Some of the transitions seem somewhat awkward, at times overemphasizing areas and in other portions underemphasizing; like they're dressing up a simple scene to be more than it actually is but throwing the audience off as to which is which. Should you look into it more or less?

The movie is incredibly enigmatic about its references and situations to the point of confusion. Some of the exposition is a little backwards in that it will go through a certain scene with a vague amount of information, then after the fact drop a line that explains what was going on. Despite, this is drenched in atmosphere with darkly lit sets that have a cold and ghostly look with certain camera angles getting full use out of them. In some instances there are no reference points to brace yourself on to the point of feeling like a general haunted house where anything can go. It's a film that isn't entirely sound but delivers some memorable scenes and an uncomfortable feeling nonetheless like any decent horror film should. The performances carry some charms, with some possessing more of a captivating look to others adding a little quirkiness.

The effects are pretty effective looking with anything from slashes materializing on a neck to producing festering boils. There are also situations that blend CGI for more complex situations such as swiveling bodies that would make an owl jealous. The premise still gives room to think with how you're viewed in other people's eyes: how some try and live up to other's expectations, while the more comfortable of us act ourselves. Yep, being content munching potato chips on the couch never stopped anyone, yet others have to do something about it to the point of obsession and ruining the beauty they once held onto.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Jae-yeon Yun (Whispering Corridors 3: Wishing Stairs)
Link: IMDB

Knife Edge (2009)

Trying to live the quaint life can be murder

This British film is more of a mystery/thriller than a horror in the modern day with excessive gore and sex to titillate. It attempts to tell an old fashioned tale that focuses on primal human emotions such as betrayal, revenge and greed with a backdrop of the supernatural. Then it takes on relating points, such as obligations to your job and family with others trying to step in the middle of your progress and happiness for their own selfish gain.

A successful woman named Emma with a sixth sense in the New York stock exchange leaves it all behind to move to an English manor with her French husband Henri and her boy Thomas. She's recently pregnant and life is going extremely well at first, till she gets random, murderous visions and a pain in her abdomen. Her husband loses a business deal and runs into money trouble. He goes to her shady, drug using brother for a loan as he doesn't want Emma to worry about the bills of their new mansion. This is despite her not feeling welcome there anyway by a series of unexplainable nightmares and what-was-that noises. Her son has an imaginary friend named Tobias that might be more linked to the past of the house than the inventive mind of a bored kid.


A share of the interactions turn over to be tediously melodramatic as she starts to become erratic from both the enormous house with nothing to do inside and the strange happenings, along with her thought to be nice husband starting to lash out from getting stressed at work and home. This attempts to shift between if it's real or not, but instead of balancing out both sides equally to be intriguing like a good mystery should it can feel like a string along. The answers to the drama portion are often easily solvable--move, get a hobby, go back to work, honest communication, live less extravagantly--as the characters are hardly given enough pressing circumstances to truly feel trapped to their current situation or the viewer challenged enough to get enraptured/lost to their problems. But then, of course, money is the root of all evil and not many can go back from already having a bulk of it. The title character confides in her family and close friends with some being genuine but others posing as wolves in sheep's clothing.


Trying to cram all of the various threads into an hour and a half time frame didn't do a service to the viewer. The result is some of the revelations are too far fetched with one too many coincidences, though I can imagine if it was in novel form it could have been a diverting yarn without time constraints and with smoother transitions to suspend disbelief. It's still imaginative and attempts to be steadily engaging, but the execution wasn't always put together in a very entertaining order and manner. It feels like a fleeting television feature, despite this being the long awaited darker tale from Anthony "Waxwork"/"Sundown" Hickox after having a share of run ins with the action genre. For one, this has too quick of a pacing for its own good. The movie moves so rapidly at times as to breeze over building up an enclosing atmosphere. Though the camera seems to move just as much as the characters do with a share of panning crane and hand held shots that manage to give this a certain style. The house jumps right into doing odd things before a setup is even established around it to give it a shadowy personality. Not to mention Emma's special abilities of seeing events before they happen is stated in a random piece of dialogue to a new comer but doesn't smooth into establishing credibility; then it's oddly forgotten for a period and blamed on other circumstances.


It looks to be a clear cut case of botched editing but a share of this is a misstep in direction and a combination of being rushed, with the former salvaging what was left. The direction seems to over emphasize points but even then still not make sense or adequately express emotions, such as an extended stare/odd look or a line stated but then dropped by a closing scene. Some revelations take too long to come out to the point of losing focus or interest, and then others can be explained too quickly to lose impact. Some of the minor transitions between scenes aren't always flush, such as a character's demeanor/position slightly jumping around from an action just before it. In areas it feels exactly like they filmed it at different times. Even the performances come in and out of going from lively, overreaching, to just plain stiff or not accommodating a certain written line to themselves. Both the leading actors, Natalie Press and Matthieu Boujenah, have performances that fall in and out to the point of being unconnective to their situation and who they are. Hugh Bonneville, although without that much screen time, gives the most credible and consistent performance as the cheery friend of the family with another side to him. Joan Plowright, as the nanny, believably fits the bill and has a dual screen presence that you're never too sure about.


In theory, this shouldn't have been as lackluster as it turned out. I'd imagine reading the filled to the brim script, seeing the larger than life locations and hearing the enthusiasms of the filmmakers to do something slightly different in the modern day would have sold it beforehand. There's definitely potential here. Though "Knife Edge" is a film that frequently requires the viewer to compensate for lack thereof and mistimings. A portion of the performances, character motivations and even certain dialogue have too many areas where it feels forced and distracting. The story doesn't always maintain charging power and the characters don't always feel credible as a result.

Rating: 3.5/10

From Black to Red recommends instead: "The Others." This is a atmospheric drama/horror film that follows an English family who lives in a large house just after WWII that carries a dark past.

Director: Anthony Hickox (Waxwork, Sundown, Hellraiser III)
Stars: Natalie Press, Matthieu Boujenah, Hugh Bonneville, Joan Plowright, Tamsin Egerton
Link: IMDB

Damned by Dawn (2009)

Having a wicked time with grandma

This low-budget Australian horror plays on the legend of the Banshee, combined with evil ghosts and your loved ones coming back as the living dead. The story is incredibly simplistic as this plays more so on a steady mood and the survival horror genre with characters running back and forth in the midst of spooky settings to save their lives.

A woman named Claire is visiting her family with her boyfriend Paul at her family's farm house. The place is filled with shrouding fog, naked trees, playful shadows and thunder storms on the rise. A spirit is seen roaming the forest when Paul picks up take out food but like everyone else is oblivious to the ominous signs and doesn't trust his own eyes. Her grandmother, Dawn, is on her death bed and they speak about the mysterious vase Claire was entrusted with but she doesn't make sense of it at the time; her Nana's ambiguity is the catalyst for the events and Claire has to clean up the mess due to her senility--not exactly the most effective transitional mode to perpetuate the story. Before bed there is a mysterious screaming sound coming from afar. Some of the family goes out to investigate and soon enough the piercing sounds are identified as coming from a tattered clothed woman with bleeding eyes and a supernatural aura that allows her to float--the Banshee herself. Soon enough the dead start to rise from the earth to take the family members lives one by one.


The major strength of this film is its atmosphere and settings and honestly not much else. A share of this looks to be some kind of dreamscape in that it has its own altered reality. The movie is persistent to the point where it makes it seem like an hour and twenty minute thrill ride with exaggerated jumps, scares and loud noises to jar your senses. Likewise, it doesn't have substance but it does play on surface sensations. Though the actual underlying story and character archetypes after awhile start to feel paper thin and to lose intrigue despite the constant mood--that's usually why those rides last less than twenty minutes. After a while, the situations feel more like random events in a Halloween haunted house than part of a linear storyline where the characters walk and run around not knowing which angle they're going to have a fright from or what to do for that matter themselves. Their actions are simple: run, trip, explore and when lucky shoot with a rifle. This has some breaks where the characters charge themselves and try to figure it out: some moments work well with anticipation, while others feel like they're stretching out the time with filler.


"Damned by Dawn" includes the standard survival movie template: the most capable character perseveres as those around her die until she can figure out how to stop the antagonist. Though instead of having some kind of intuition to make her someone to carry the picture with staying power like, say, "The Evil Dead," which this takes influence from, she appears to get lucky and without always getting a solid footing on the ground. The CGI monsters are about as dated looking as a '90s Playstation video game, though to its benefit are often covered up by the excessive use of fog; it's to the point where it makes the pool halls of "The Hustler" look like breathable air. Some of the other effects are effective and by contrast it makes these noticeably distracting. The dead come in a few forms: flying skeletons, grim reapers, zombies. Their mechanics are inconsistent in that they move quickly at some points and then at others, when the characters are wide open, start to creep as if they suddenly forgot that they can actually speed along. The dialogue and performances are hit and miss. In the calmer scenes they hold their own, though when some of the action picks up it's as if they're speaking from the script instead of becoming a personality in their self. Makes you wish they would have kept a few lines to themselves but then instead spoke up to fill the audience in better about some parts to its conclusion. Recommended only for someone who wants a simple supernatural horror to completely shut off their brain with and let themselves go with mood.

Rating: 4/10

Director: Brett Anstey
Link: IMDB

Scream of the Banshee (2011)

This chick can scream...but who'd date her?

This is a story that mixes Irish folklore with Templar knights that have locked away a secret for hundreds of years till it's accidentally unleashed in the modern day. It starts with more mystery and drama and then moves over to some more scares. The events unfold like a from-one-thing-to-the-next type of story mixed with amateur detective work since no one will believe such a fantastic tale anyhow but the few that seen it with their own bulging eyes.

In 12th century Ireland, knights are chasing a woman on horseback through the woods. A fight breaks out with some supernatural abilities shown and the victor, being the last man standing, decapitates the woman and encloses her head in a specially designed metallic box. Present day: an archeology professor is archiving historical artifacts when she receives an anonymous package with a gauntlet inside and a small map that hints at an additional item at the college campus she works at. She gives the task to her daughter and a false room is stumbled into with a medium sized crate that has Duncan written on the side. Inside is a metallic box that's opened by the gauntlet from earlier. It reveals a grotesque severed head with monstrous teeth. One of them disturbs it, causing the head to scream with such force that their ears bleed, only to then disintegrate with no evidence to show for themselves.

They begin to get haunting visits at night and strange occurrences as if something is trying to lure them out with a trap. They stumbled into more clues with a soothsayer named Broderick Duncan who used to teach at the same school. The Internet is a key player in their information gathering with videos from Duncan that leads them into finding out if you've heard the scream, it's essentially a death sentence. The daughter and mother are about to move around again, which causes tension to form between them and the daughter's new boyfriend. Though the romance angle between the two youngsters starts to distract from the story since it carries a contrasting tone and feels like fluff.

Some of the rules and mechanics line up a little too smoothly when the monsters appear and disappear. What's strange is the Banshee seems to wait around till it's convenient to the characters and how much development the audience is shown. It makes them unpredictable in a sense, but to a fault since you're not even sure what they're driving at. Your death? It makes it sound so mundane and one-dimensional when you have some rules for where they came from but not a solid reason of what they're doing there. The characters feel both totally safe to then completely in danger but without a balance in between to maintain the tension since there aren't very many rules in place to stop the Banshee and make this an engaging cat and mouse type of game on both sides. A share of the scares are extreme closeups and deafening sound effects with some strobes and unexpected events to catch you by surprise--to it's credit there's a reason for it. It's a good thing too as the flashing lights somewhat cover up some of the shoddy, thrown-together prosthetics and dated CGI work with good ol' smoke and mirrors.

"Scream of the Banshee" starts out on a high point with an intriguing premise with its own legend and rules, plus the way it was stumbled into makes it somewhat possible on suspending your disbelief. "Dead Silence" had some similar rules to its villain though both are completely different movies. This film only goes down hill from there as it begins to feel rushed to the point of nearly falling flat on its face and the audience thinking where did the picture go? The middle half starts to feel somewhat formulaic and not helped by the obvious editing trick that signals commercial breaks in between since it was also shown on the SyFy channel as a made of TV movie. The ending is a complete mess to the point where I'd have to have the patience of Dali Lama and another three paragraphs to break down the inconsistencies. Some of the dialogue at this point comes across as forced in that it doesn't always feel catered to that specific person playing the role. Some of it feels unauthentic enough to have been read just prior in a script. The motivations start to become nonsensical, anticlimactic and like padding to the run time, not to mention some of its prior story arcs were dropped and never picked back up. There's a decent movie in there somewhere, just whatever power above must have treated it like a stepping stone and had their attention/commitment elsewhere. The optimistic person in me can't get over how the movie can't hold up to such a cool title.

Rating: 2.5/10

From Black to Red recommends instead: "Dead Silence": Your scream is your death. So getting scared from pop outs and looming shadows is an integral part of the story that's also filled with atmosphere, engaging and memorable scenarios till the credits are rolling.

Director: Steven C. Miller (Automaton Transfusion)
Stars: Lauren Holly, Marcelle Baer, Leanne Cochran, Todd Haberkorn, Lance Henriksen
Link: IMDB

Seconds Apart (2011)

Two nerds you wouldn't dare mess with

A raging party is going down at a house with a group of jocks giving bragging rights to women and playing a drinking game around a table in an enclosed room. Someone shows up with a video camera and heads for the room they're in. The game suddenly turns over to Russian Roulette as each of the guys blows their brains out with the same casual dialog they engaged in before. The cynical and sarcastic detective Lampkin is called to the scene to investigate what looks at first as a suicide but without the logical reason to back it up. Jonah and Seth are twins that were born "Seconds Apart" and share everything, including the special ability that caused the jocks to kill themselves while they filmed on.

The twins are sadistic, smarty pants teens without remorse and a deadly weapon at their disposal, which leaves them without fear or feeling. They call what they do "projects" that come with a video library to show for their past transgressions. They lack empathy and use their hobby to get a shred of feeling, if possible, for the horrible, tortuous ways their victims end up going out when rewatching the video footage. Through sheer intuition and some interviews, the detective suspends his disbelief that they could have something to do with it despite the brothers never getting physical with the victims. The background knowledge he puts into this makes him in the modern day look more amateur than pro, as if he's all mouth, eyes and ears than an evidence man. How do you prove an unheard of ability in someone's mind through modern law? That's just it. How do you take one regular detective that's not on a special task force or seen anything of the like before and make him believe right away than just moving on; wouldn't have been the same movie, I know, but at least give him something more to clench a foundation to make it more fascinating and challenging as to what he's stumbled into otherwise the concept can feel underused to a new comer. Because he has too much time on his hands? No other cases? No wife/kids? Come on. The twins start to get power hungry when things don't go their way and act like they're invincible. Seth is unflinching to what they're doing, while Jonah is more reasonable. Jonah meets a new, confident girl from school named Eve that puts up a divide between the two that were inseparable beforehand causing their close knit relationship to go all downhill from there.


"Seconds Apart" plays out like a horror tale meets gumshoe type story with a shadowy look to the settings and chromatic, bleak templates in others to give it some atmosphere. The detective is somewhat tongue-in-cheek on the genre: drinking, smoking, a past traumatic event, wise cracking, trench coat wearing, obsessive behavior--you name it. The issue is he stands out as such a contrast here that it makes you wonder what was the purpose of him being here other than to throw a stick in the spokes of the twins and be a self-sacrificing guy to uncover the truth. At points, he felt like a device in the script than a person, especially since the story doesn't maintain a steady central character but jumps between perspectives of both sides. This isn't always stable when balancing mystery and character development: either being too obvious or not giving enough. The two twins are frequently shown with their actions and thoughts out in the open, along with the detective frequenting old haunts and giving little bits of pieces of his past with the same nightmarish flashbacks of a tragedy with his late wife with a scar to show for it.

What brings the picture down is the general tone feels unsteady at points. It starts out somewhat sadistic but with some black/dry humor, then moves on over to the dramatic and sympathetic as they dive further into the characters' lives, and then a back and forth again to the previously mentioned but not always with smooth transitions in between. The film has its share of transitional periods but doesn't always maintain a level of intrigue or mystery, especially when it starts to meander in the middle portion and significantly bring down the focus the film had prior. The level of tension starts to lose its grip as it turns more melodramatic and somewhat mundane. Eventually they get to the explanation behind their abilities, though it seems somewhat run-of-the-mill and something you would have already seen on "X-Files" or "Millennium," except squeezed in towards the end as if they needed to include some stock answer for it all that wasn't even foreshadowed or built up to prior. Another twist happens, that's better left unhinted, but makes it more worthwhile.


The brothers have all the power and manipulation they need but are lonely individuals that don't know any better. They play the typical twins but amped up to an uncanny level, such as finishing each other's sentences or be it dressing and acting alike. Their parents are all creepy smiles and overly charming demeanor, no matter the situation. Their presence is unsettling since you don't know where they're coming from or what they're potentially hiding themselves. This has some fantastic visuals during some segments that look almost as detailed as paintings. There are also some really cruel and cringeworthy ways the victims hallucinate while in a trancelike state. "Seconds Apart" had a lot of potential but got a little ambitious to include as many threads as possible. I'd imagine it would have been a more solid experience if they resequenced, built up more to or tightened up some of the scenarios. It's no doubt got a distinct identity down pat, which can't always be said about other horror flicks, but those mentioned might have given it more of a central, driving focus to get completely wrapped up in.

Rating: 6.5/10

Director: Antonio Negret (Hacia la oscuridad (Towards Darkness))
Stars: Orlando Jones, Edmund Entin, Gary Entin, Samantha Droke, Louis Herthum, Morgana Shaw
Link: IMDB

Fertile Ground (2011)

Singles, beware of this place!

This is a drama that plays around with the supernatural in forms of visions, nightmares and pop-out scares accompanied with jarring music to momentarily rile senses. The main component of its story centers around a couple who are trying to conceive but due to complications it puts a strain on the relationship with a stay at home wife and a painter who keeps the family afloat with his art galleries.

Emily and Nate Weaver are attempting to have their first child, until during a dinner party Emily excuses herself and profusely bleeds out. They move out to an old farm house to get away from everything and restore their happiness. The property used to be in Nate's family in the early 20th century and was constructed 100 years prior to that. Soon enough, the old house gives off something more suspicious than the usual odd creak or two, such as a hand print on the window, voices in the cellar and some old photographs of past relatives. They stumble onto a human skull buried on the property. Emily heads over to the local eccentric historian who rattles off a list of speculative dark events that occurred at the residence over the course of its history. Her husband is frequently away due to his line of work and she's alone in the big, empty house by herself. Random, ominous occurrences are on the rise as if something is trying to communicate to her for help or ward her away. As you can already guess from the title's sake, she gets pregnant in their new house, though it's a high risk, causing her to stay off her feet and away from stress, which ends up only mounting to even more stress from the loneliness and isolation.

"Fertile Ground" tries to play on if it's the pressure of her situation, leading to just imagining it, if it's coincidental or if it's really happening and you're indeed watching a supernatural tale with ghosts. This is gradually paced and unfolds somewhat organically than coming right out and stating its intentions. It's partly a mystery, though in the meantime there isn't always a strong subtext to latch onto. It doesn't always hold steady with interest or with relating points and part of the experience feels somewhat like routine stuff, only to remind you that you have better things to do than to occupy yourself with the dramas of a couple in a country house in who knows where. The movie doesn't always grab you and pull you in or make what you're watching significant or an exceptional to the rule until the latter half that picks up to a thriller like pacing. Though getting there doesn't always work with the sum of its collective parts, since the audience will get just an abrupt scare every now and again in comparison to the main story. Some of the drama feels somewhat forced despite the film moving one moment at a time, especially when the situations going for tension don't always feel detrimental enough.

It boils down to the slow degradation of a married couple who's got a strong case of cabin fever or a wicked case of possession. "Fertile Ground" does the ambiguous ending well, with enough information to fairly choose a side and your own interpretation. That's definitely its strength and it's evident that the filmmakers worked back through the movie to make that happen quite possibly to a fault since the rest is anchored on something you haven't even seen yet till you get there.

Rating: 5.5/10

Director: Adam Gierasch (Autopsy, Night of the Demons 2010)
Stars: Leisha Hailey, Gale Harold
Link: IMDB

From Within (2008)

Smalltown Hypocrisy, USA

"From Within" is a drama/thriller with elements of horror and the supernatural that includes religion, intolerance and stubbornness in an area called Grovetown that's full of small town views and a local legend that's on the hush hush. A teenager that looks like a goth reads from a book in an odd tongue while sitting next to his girlfriend. He pulls out a revolver as casually as if it's a picnic basket and shoots himself with the horrified girlfriend as a witness. She runs into town a bloody mess as if being chased from something and dies by her own hand as well. From then on out, each unlucky person who was the last to see the person commit the act or their body dies.

The perspective of the small town is shown through another teenage girl named Lindsay who goes to the local high school as well as attends the local church and likes the minister's son at both places named Dylan. Rumors spread about the connection to it all and blinded tempers and closed-minded fears come out. Dylan gets into a fight with a soft spoken kid named Aiden, who's not a member of the church and the brother of the first teen to commit suicide. Lindsay drives him home and there it comes out about Aiden's mother dying in a suspicious fire out back from a fear that she was a witch. Ominous threats are in the air as if a battle is about to ensue with opposing religious beliefs. The local Sheriff sweeps speculation under the rug which causes Lindsay to meddle before anything drastic breaks out. As the suicides begin to pile up, the minister's son holds some clout over the town and takes matters into his own hands with Lindsay caught in the middle between Dylan and Aiden.

"From Within" offers a series of intermittent, sudden scares mixed with the main body of a small town drama that reveals some skeletons in its closet. Some of the pop outs seem too in your face with crisp effects that have tendency to be caught in the frame for too long, leaving out anticipation or mystery as to what it is or how it came to be. On the one hand, it's not going to be as enigmatic as "The Broken" was but parts of it feel too simplified nonetheless. Some of the deaths start to seem less and less random as they so happen to coincide and are spaced out with current events. It takes away from the it-could-happen-to-you-at-anytime nervousness. Though in some areas right before the person is going to get it, it does play on the something-lurking-over-your-shoulder angle with the audience being a witness but helpless to the fact. The one by one death sentences almost seem like something out of "Final Destination" though somewhat less elaborate. Some people go quickly, while others at a later time when convenient to the narrative.

The subtext here concerns religious hypocrisy on both sides that are using it with their own interpretations or how they deem fit for personal gain. There's also intolerance and stubbornness even when faced with some facts. If there was ever going to be an exceptional example of the mentioned, Grovetown is that place. No one is all the way in the right here and that sentiment comes without resolve and a bleak conclusion that it got so out of hand. This is redneck stuff we're dealing with so guns, pick up trucks and beer play a role when it comes to accelerating action. Some of the personalities are caricatures that make the story a little black and white and somewhat easily deciphered. It makes you wonder if the filmmakers didn't think the audience would get the point, hence the obviousness and exaggeration at points. Elizabeth Rice as Lindsay sticks out with a decent portrayal and a share of emotions across the board to feel for her character's actions. Thomas Dekker as Aidan and Kelly Blatz as Dylan get a little more range than the supporting cast but still play their parts with only a few steps outside the box, so essentially you can count on their next moves, which takes away from surprises. This is a little more catered for the late teens crowd, though overall this was a decent enough experience with an actual story and message to share for the experience.

Rating: 6/10

Director: Phedon Papamichael (Dark Side of Genius)
Stars: Elizabeth Rice, Thomas Dekker, Kelly Blatz, Adam Goldberg
Link: IMDB

The Reeds (2009)

A muddy cloud of who's who, what's what, where's where

Three couples go out on what's supposed to be a leisurely boating retreat in a stretch of canal away from civilization in England. That's the easy explanation of it. The rest is a doozy to describe and try to make it cohesive sounding especially in the right order of things. Essentially the story unfolds like a loosely laid out series of events that eventually leads to a survival horror film with some elements of the supernatural.

Right from the getgo they get haggled when hiring a boat as if the trip is to be called off, but then get directed to a boat out back that has some teens already on it. Tempers almost flare until one of the women recognizes a red headed woman from earlier who ran out in front of their car abruptly and the too-cool-for-words youngsters stride away. Off the couples go with a map that takes them no where and with nothing but reeds standing in their way to the promised pub they're headed to. Did I mention cell phones don't work? A guy named Chris is the resident loud mouth and party guy who skinny dips, yells at the youngsters again and becomes a belligerent drunk when playing cards. Maybe it's for the best the pub destination fizzled. Soon enough they hear and see something unexplainable in the reeds and then crash from a protrusion that sticks through the bottom of the boat and injures one of the crew.


They're stuck and one of them is slowly bleeding to death. The most capable guy attempts to swim back while the others bide their time on the boat. They come into more circumstances with the teens who are now slaughtering animals, a man who might be friend or foe with a shotgun, under water cages with skeletons, some strange visions of themselves, along with nature and darkness standing in their way to safety...and who could forget "The Reeds," which aren't always capitalized on--might as well be "The Shrubs," "The Fences," "The Palm Trees" (I know, I know). The boat goes through more trouble and trying to scramble away all at once leads to a share of injuries among the crew, which seems both convenient towards the storyline for getting people out of the way to concentrate on the hero, but then anticlimactic towards generating the nuances of danger and desperation in a horror film. At this point people hallucinate with no explanation as to why and it makes the experience and relevance confusing as to what is actually going on even more so.

The issue with "The Reeds" is it fails to set up a premise, what that place in particular means, why it encloses a legend, or even if it's capable of drawing people in from some force towards it. It eventually gets there but you're not watching the film from back to front and would need some valid clues in the meantime. I have a feeling that this was written that way and it shows. The bread crumbs it lures you with don't feel satiating enough to entice your hunger to go on. Basically you get a share of forced melodrama with six people you could care less if they live or even die. The general tone feels confusing and tedious rather than mysterious or intriguing. You're left standing with no subtext or steady direction towards a focal point. Instead you get a share of general characters with attributes that are neither capable of bringing about a sense of the dramatic or in the way of entertainment. One of the women named Laura is an exception by showing some strength and a knowledgeable medical background to help her friends and get help. You have to sell your audience and this feels more mundane than delivering cinematic material that would be in the way of gripping or alluring. On top of that, the editing and camera angles are all over the place when the action heats up and can give one a headache with what's shown and for what reason. At times, certain events happen out of the blue and instead of being shocking or thrilling, it makes your throbbing brain work that much harder to figuring out what they're trying to portray and how it was relevant to the shot before it since it's not always framed up or hinted at beforehand, such as people appearing and disappearing without context.


Part of the outline is eventually explained towards the end through the "resident legend guy" yelling it back and forth with snippets of information that's supposed to make it sound more natural. Its twist seems too far fetched without more foreshadowing beforehand that would make it truly rewarding or fascinating. There's some atmosphere generated towards the latter portion when there are less characters in the way and it's nice that the film tries to go for something that isn't a straightforward template like some other horror films, as well as changes around the survival format somewhat. The performances were of decent caliber for what they're given and they seem to have some chemistry together as a group. Though its convoluted ideas and unsteady execution have little backing power in the greater scheme of things and really bog this down.

Rating: 2/10

Director: Nick Cohen (Voodoo Lagoon)
Link: IMDB

Lake Mungo (2008)

A person not removed

This is a faux docu-drama with elements of mystery and the supernatural that revolves around a young woman named Alice Palmer who recently passed in her home town in Australia. She went missing in a local lake and the family doesn't want to let go right away or accept the inevitable. A decomposed woman's body is found, yet they partly drag out if it might actually be her and that her life couldn't have abruptly ended that day when there was so much more that could have been. Back at their house, there are strange noises, nightmares, sightings and even suspicious photographs to what seems to be her physical presence in the time that follows. The mother seeks out a psychic who wants to hold a seance. Secrets come out regarding the family after the fact, the psychic in question, as well as that involve Alice that no one else knew about her with immediate relatives and friends.

The slow, evolving pace is what makes this film work. It's not quick and upbeat or hip and trendy, but something that captures the scenery and her life in glimpses and flashes. There are a share of recorded mediums that it transforms from: some crisp and steady, some grainy and shaky. The latter comes with some eerie and unsettling scenes that eventually make your eyes scan the surrounding shots for hidden clues--nothing is what it seems is the impression. It has a very deliberate flow to the point of sucking in a viewer and getting involved to the point of forgetting that this is just a film. Though it's somewhat depressing watching a documentary film, even if fictional, about a young person that's life abruptly ends with only bits and pieces as to what she was up till that point. The story is concerned about her past and how it affects all that knew her now, but the mind still wanders into this dark territory nonetheless of what could have been.

The film gives off a general sense of regret and melancholia in that she keep things from them that were beyond her teenage years that caused her to silently suffer without anyone else knowing since she had very few to turn to or trust. The home video footage becomes instantly haunting that the person you're seeing no longer exists and little did she know of it at that time that it's her last images. The mother has the hardest time letting go and grasps on to any information, whether good or bad, about her daughter's life. The brother was also close and uses ways to cope with his late sister that some question whether it's rational or justified. The father and boyfriend speak with a little more pep that sometimes show glimpses of emotional restraint, as well as friends, co-workers and investigators who give their take.

"Lake Mungo" manages to keep itself interesting with a steady focus and share of revelations. Some of them feel a little manipulated, for fixating on one way for a period, then turning it around and that not being the case at all. As well as a few revelations jump forward a little quicker than others. Watching this gives off some reminders of the sad and wrenching film "Ordinary People," though there's still some positive, heartfelt and dramatic interviews that reflect human loss and then how to cope with the fact through a share of outlets that gives this a little bit of resolve despite its somber mood at times. Others who've had someone abruptly pass don't always get to share the after effects like they did, or to others that would have never known this girl in this particular place and time. Some areas are dry to give room to form an opinion, while others are leaning more towards the paranormal being possible without the other side getting a chance to breath. This isn't a film to just put on since the experience might linger and brood in one's mind or possibly turn over to being upset with the filmmakers for making it so realistic.

Rating: 8/10

Director: Joel Anderson
Link: IMDB