Good setting and some nice atmosphere, but the rest is pretty terrible.

Li-1

Rating: * out of ****

The straight-to-video market has actually produced a number of quality horror films in the last few years, so no longer should we automatically expect crap from the genre just because it happens to end up on rental shelves first. Quite hyped up by straight-to-video standards, Boo is unfortunately one of the more disappointing films I've seen in recent memory, not nearly the taut, scary experience I'd expected. Heck, it's not even fun to watch, which is the least I'd hope for from a movie about a group of teens stuck in a haunted hospital.

What I just mentioned was the gist of the plot, though there's also a subplot about a guy searching for his sister in the hospital but it's about as awkwardly introduced as just about anything else here. Take, for instance, the opening scene, which seems to want to poke fun at the self-conscious horror flicks that once swarmed the market, but it's a scene that fails to produce any tension or laughs.

This is indicative of the rest of the film as a whole. Though the movie appears to be a straight-up horror flick, it's hard to tell if there's an underlying layer of self-awareness to the whole thing or if it's just because the acting is so stilted, it's difficult to discern if the cast was even taking the film seriously.

That's not to say there aren't already plenty of problems with the plot, the most obvious of which is that rather than playing it in a simple, straightforward manner, the script tacks on some of the most annoying plot devices the genre has to offer, most particularly the girl who has that inexplicable "psychic link" with the hospital. Any time the film looks like it might gain some momentum, this "psychic link" rears its ugly head and brings the pace to a griding halt.

But weak as the story is, the acting is definitely worse, with not a single passable performance among the entire cast. They're not even convincing when they're re-animated "ghosts," to the extent that the director even ends up resorting to using reverberating voices to make them sound scary. I'm usually lenient when it comes to quality acting in the genre, but I'm beginning to realize how important competent performances are, seeing as I'd like a character or two to root for or at least someone who genuinely looks terrified by the situation around them.

The gore is a mixed bag. Not badly done, but when created with CGI it fails to mesh in well with the more atmospheric approach that director Anthony C. Ferrante is clearly striving for. Though the film mostly fails to deliver, I've got to give the filmmakers credit for achieving a fairly decent sense of atmosphere and a pretty good setting, but that's as far as it goes. Such qualities do little good when the rest of the film is otherwise flat and lacking in scares, suspense, or even a sense of urgency. Worst haunted house flick since Dark Castle's Thirteen Ghosts? Probably so.

score /10

Li-1 2 November 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1207249/