The one film I was looking forward to more than any in this year’s After Dark Horrorfest was THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE, which was said to be a horror version of the ’93 comedy GROUNDHOG DAY. Little was shown from this film and only recently have we seen stills and a trailer. It looked and sounded flippin cool… but it isn’t.

IAN STONE tells the story of an all-American guy who is murdered each day by horrifying pursuers, only to wake up in slightly different lives to experience the terror of being murdered again.

The film is really odd in a way as it tries to emulate the world from THE MATRIX on a shoestring budget. It’s an extremely ambitious project that in the end fails to deliver the “edge” it so promises. It lacks suspense to the highest level and carries another direct to video score that sounds like it was designed specifically for the Sci-Fi Channel.

Even the idea of Ian Stone dying over and over again isn’t well done. Just about the lowest denominator of effort and creativity was put into the deaths; I was expecting to see some FINAL DESTINATION sh-t, but instead just watch his throat get cut over and over again.

I think the only reason I’d watch this again would be to see Jamie Murray running around in skimpy clothes for another hour and a half (there’s nothing wrong with a little Britney Spears red latex outfit.) And even though the special FX work wasn’t the greatest you’ve ever seen, some of the reapers looked pretty damn cool.

Overall, I am pretty disappointed with THE DEATHS OF IAN STONE and would say this is yet another title that should have only been available on DVD. There’s zero scare, zero substance, zero creativity and zero value in this lackluster feat from Stan Winston’s camp. But in all honesty, I’ll let you be the judge without even seeing the movie... the very last line is a f-cking one-liner, “Whats a matter, scared?” Yeah, I’m scared people are actually going to pay to see this in a theater.