I try to appreciate a good low budget horror movie myself and I rent them as often as my patience can allow. However, despite the effects studio's superb job in creating some creepy stuff, the film feels more like someone following the actors through a haunted house than a movie at all. I agree with the original review that the "old tricks" are cool - a send-up to Craven's Nightmare on Elm St. is so obvious it's sad. It doesn't feel like an homage, it feels like hackwork. And if the 'demon killers' are blantant mimics of the Cenobytes, I don't know what is. The acting is terrible and the script is almost worse. I give Jeff Thomas encouragement in doing what he could with what he had to create something horrifying, but this movie does not deserve more than a 2 - a 3 if I'm in a good mood. None of the storyline makes really any sense. The group finds a "creepy" carved piece of wood in some random patch of field and from there on, it is totally forgotten and meaningless. And Davis' friend's recurring nightmare? All pieces of plot that are totally out of place. And if Thomas is going to use the typical "dream sequence" even if this is a heroin-induced alternate reality to cope with dying, why is there so much focus on characters that aren't Davis? His point of view is almost totally lost, we never get a feel for him at all until Shapiro wraps it all up in a sentence or two. There are so many out of place pieces of faux horror that a viewer starts to wonder if they all go to the same puzzle. The sole fact that this "indie" film is refreshingly devoid of Ms. Barrymore's budget is not a reason to excuse a poor script and worse acting in favor of some pretty creepy albeit done before carnage.
The Story line is really good. The Bad Guys are really creepy. The acting... is really bad. If this movie had better acting it would be a 10, but the acting is just... really, really bad. This movie is still a classic Independent horror movie.
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