Uninteresting, convoluted, just don't care.

gtc83

This film starts out with a parody of the beginning of Scream, which was really the wrong thing to do because it sets it up as some sort of comedy, thereby ruining any tension that might have been created right from the start. Then we get some cop that, we later learn, has some experience with this haunted mental institution that our group of kids will go to for a Halloween get-together. The trouble is that it ruins any sort of pacing the movie might have had. It's boring right from the beginning. The cop character is really unnecessary, and learning about his personality yadda yadda yadda just slows everything down. Then we meet out group of kids. We get to know them just a tiny little bit, but then it's off to the institution for Halloween festivities. Once there, we're subjected to every camera gimmick known to man in an attempt to create tension. For instance, someone will be in an elevator, the lights will go out, and we get a solid minute of this person frantically shining their flashlight around the elevator. Except it's done in such a way that it looks like they're in a warehouse, and the flashlight beam only illuminates a six inch circle on the wall. We catch a quick glimpse of someone standing in the shadows. Prepare yourself for about a thousand variations on this camera gimmickry, because it's the sole method used for creating "scares" throughout the movie.

The other problem is the characters. They're just not convincing, we don't really get to know them or like them or even give a damn if they live or die. The plot is also hopelessly convoluted, relying on NUMEROUS flashbacks / dream sequences to show us the history of the mental institution. There are several different ghosts, and over an agonizingly long period of time, we learn their back-stories. They occasionally take over a dead persons' body, and when they're shot we get what looks like a bowl full of pink pudding being splashed against a wall.

Overall, bad characters, bad story, hopeless reliance on camera effects to create "scares"; it's just a mess. It probably wouldn't have been bad if they would have gone the cheeseball route, tossed in a ton of T&A, simplified the plot, and given the characters some actual personality. Or they could have made it a serious scary movie, gotten rid of the camera gimmickry and replaced it with honest-to-goodness atmosphere, and given the characters some actual personality. Either of those might have worked, but this didn't. It seems film makers are utterly incapable of endowing their characters with any sort of personality these days. They won't make a good movie until they fix that problem.

score 3/10

gtc83 4 June 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1385315/