The Dead Room Movie Review – Too Long and Yet Not Long

Runtime: 80 minutes

Release Date: April 8, 2016

Rating: NR?

Director: Jason Sutter

Similar to The Amityville Horror, The Dead Room deals with a haunted house that was so terrifying it forced a family to take up and leave in the middle of the night. In the hopes of finding out what actually happened, three investigators arrive and decide to spend a few days filming the house and looking for signs of ghosts.

Liam is the lead investigator and the one who most doubts the family's stories. After investigating dozens of other cases, he's heard it all and is incredibly cynical. Many of the things they said remind him of things he heard before. Scott is his right hand man and equally doubtful. He even reminds Liam of cases they worked on in the past that people faked. Also along for the ride is Holly who apparently really is psychic. She finds their stories sad and wonders if they ever found any real proof of the paranormal.

On their first day there, they find nothing in the way of evidence. Holly can't sense any presences in the home, nothing shows up on their cameras, and their other feeds detect nothing. Though they do catch some movement on one camera in the middle of the night, Scott convinces them that it was just the wind. They later capture a rocking chair moving on its own, and Holly sees a shadowy figure that no one else can see. In the hopes of finding more evidence, they decide to spend more time there, which causes the paranormal activity to worsen. As furniture flies through the air and the spirit chases them through the house, they must decide if capturing evidence is as important as their own lives.

The Dead Room had a few things going for it, but most notably, the characters. Liam is the type of character who we need more of in horror films. There are so many movies like this that feature characters dead set on the idea that ghosts exist and willing to go overboard to prove it. Liam is much more mellow and pretty much a skeptic. Even when faced with real evidence, he's willing to find other explanations for what he saw. Holly was fairly interesting too, especially when she actually began detecting the presence, and Scott at least kept things entertaining.

If you think I liked the film because I liked the characters, think again. I put it on Netflix the other day to have something to watch while waiting for a food delivery and kept thinking about fast forwarding. It's a slow movie, and not the type of slow burn that I usually like. So much doesn't happening in the first half that you start wondering if there's an actual ghost or if this is one of those movies that ends with someone living in the basement. It was just too slow for me.

The end to The Dead Room was really good and had a nice twist. I just wish that some of those action sequences occurred early on. By the time we learn what's really going on, I was ready to turn it off. The Dead Room just didn't do it for me.

The Last House on Cemetery Lane Movie Review – Crazy, Crazy Writers

Runtime: 82 minutes

Release Date: February 17, 2015

Rating: NR

Director: Andrew Jones

Despite being only 82 minutes long, The Last House on Cemetery Lane felt much, much, much longer to me.

John Davies is a successful screenwriter living in London who grows tired of the hustle and bustle of the city. Remembering the fun times he had in the English countryside as a child, he decides to take a break and move back. He finds the perfect home for rent through a local real estate agent. It overlooks the water, has a large property surrounding it, and comes with two full floors. During their meeting though, he learns that there is actually a tenant on the second floor. As she's blind and never leaves, he doesn't need to worry about her. Though he isn't fond of sharing “his home” with someone else, he agrees to rent it.

On one of his first days, he looks outside and sees a beautiful woman playing on the swingset nearby. After chatting with her, he learns that her name is Cassie and that she lives in the neighborhood. Cassie seems a little nervous about being around the house and reluctantly admits that she heard stories about it before. Though interested in the tales, he's even more interested in her.

The longer that John stays in the house, the more unsettled he feels. It starts out slowly. He thinks he feels someone watching him, he finds things missing, he realizes that things moved to new locations, and he hears noises inside the wall. Like most of us, he blames some of it on the upstairs neighbor. She refuses to answer the door or even talk to him, but the real estate agent assures him that Agnes is harmless. Once John starts researching the house and learning about what happened there over the years, he realizes that there might be an underlying reason for all his weird experiences.

Not to be a downer, but this movie really sucked. It was one of those that made me keep grabbing the remote and checking to see how much time was left and feeling disappointed that I had so much time left to go. It's hard to explain, but it felt more like a movie that told us a story instead of one that showed us a story. It was like: here's John, John writes movies, here's this girl, John likes this girl, here's something strange happening, etc. It felt super disjointed and occasionally seemed like the actors didn't even want to be there, which definitely pulled me out of the story.

As a low budget movie, the special effects were particularly bad. The director should have just skipped the idea of adding special effects and tried to give the film an unsettling feel with things like creaky footsteps in the hallway or dark shadows over his shoulder. It lacked anything really new or even different.

As someone with friends in the industry, I know that you can do a lot with a very limited budget. It seems like the director of this one didn't learn that. I kept waiting for something interesting or entertaining to happen, but it felt more like a play that grudgingly walked us through the story...

Movie Review: Lights Out – Keep the Lights On

Runtime: 81 minutes

Release Date: July 22, 2016

Rating: PG-13

Director: David F. Sandberg

While it isn't really terrifying, I highly recommend watching this one with all the lights out if possible.

A woman working in a mannequin warehouse sees what looks like the shadow of a woman standing in the back room. When she turns the lights off, the woman disappears. She warns her boss, Paul, before leaving for the night. Though Paul doesn't believe her, he sees the woman for himself. She gets closer and closer as the lights go out. Despite trying to make it back to his lit office, the shadowy figure kills him.

We then meet Rebecca and her friends with benefits Bret. Though Bret clearly wants more, she keeps blowing him off because she doesn't believe in forming attachments to other people. We learn why when she gets a call that her half-brother Martin keeps falling asleep in school. It turns out that their mother Sophie suffers from mental illness. When she's on her meds, she's fine, but Rebecca learns that her mom stopped taking her meds and keeps talking about her friend Diana. Every time she stops her meds, she sees Diana. We also find out that Paul was Martin's father and Diana's second husband. Rebecca's father took off when she was a kid and never came back.

After stopping by the house and finding light bulbs missing and lights turned off, Rebecca decides to take her brother home with her. Despite him finally getting a solid night's sleep, a social worker comes to see her and claims that her mother wants him back and that she' fine. Rebecca begins remembering when she saw Diana herself as a child and wonders if the woman really does exist. With the help of Bret, she goes through her stepfather's things to find proof of who Diana was and to uncover a mystery to help both her mother and her brother.

Lights Out really was a pretty good flick. I saw it at the drive-in with both my boyfriend and my roommate, both of whom like horror movies. All three of us had moments where we started laughing nervously and tried to hold a conversation because it meant looking away from the screen. The roommate even took out his phone to suddenly look up something he had to know right then instead of watching it. The people in the next car over actually screamed a few times too.

Let's get it out of the way: Diana is fucking terrifying. She's this shadowy creature that seemingly stands feet above everyone else at times, had long dark hair that hides her face, and can move as quick as a bunny in the dark. Whether it was her running across the floor on her hands and knees or slowly creeping up in the background behind someone, I was about to jump out of my seat.

While the ending is a little cheesy and the explanation of who she is came out of nowhere, I really liked Lights Out because it actually made me a little scared to turn off the lights after watching it.

The Darkness Movie Review – No Bruce, No!

Runtime: 92 minutes

Release Date: May 13, 2016

Rating: PG-13

Director: Greg McLean

I had the chance to see this movie at the drive in earlier this year but was feeling sick and skipped it. I'm kind of glad I only paid a few bucks to rent it.

The Darkenss takes a family of four to the Grand Canyon. There's workaholic Peter, his recovering alcoholic wife Bronny, their typical teenage daughter, and their autistic son Mikey. As they have fun with their friends, the friends' teenage son takes the other two on a hike. Left alone, Mikey stumbles, falls through a hole in the ground, and lands in an underground cavern. He finds weird black rocks that have white symbols across the front and decides to take them home without telling anyone.

This naturally sets off a massive shit storm. Bronny gets irritated at Mikey for constantly leaving the kitchen faucet on, but he tells her that it was his new friend Jenny. He also makes comments about the people on the ceiling. Stephanie, the daughter, sees dark handprints on her bedroom walls, which she assumes is her brother being a pest. Bronny experiences some strange things of her own, including finding her son in the attic and him claiming that Jenny showed him a short cut. They also discover small fires around the house that they believe Mikey set.

As the ghostly activity amps up, everyone starts acting differently. Bronny finds that Stephanie started throwing up everything she ate and keeps jugs of her vomit under the bed. We learn that Peter had an affair, which makes his interactions with the new hot girl at the office a little disturbing. Bronny finally breaks down and has a drink, which leads to her full on falling off the wagon. After talking about their problems with Peter's boss, Peter finally snaps and reveals that he knew she started drinking again and that he just wants her to shut up. With the help of the boss's wife though, they may finally find a solution to their ghostly problems.

The cast of The Darkness is really the best part about the film. Not only do we get Kevin Bacon as Peter and Radha Mitchell as Bronny, but we also get the hillarious Matt Walsh and gorgeous Jennifer Morrison as their best friends at the beginning. Who doesn't love seeing Morrison and Bacon together again after Stir of Echoes? Paul Reiser and Ming-na then turn up as Peter's boss and the boss's wife.

Sadly, the rest of the movie is just eh. The only scene that really got me came when Stephanie was in the kitchen late at night and thought she head something. You expect to see something pop up behind her when she closes the refrigerator door, but it's actually just a flash of something in the microwave as she walks through the room. That scene was done so well that I wonder why the rest was so bad.

And, don't get me started on the ending! It was like someone watched Poltergeist, started writing a movie, and then gave up at the end. It's literally a healing that causes Mikey to go through a ghostly portal as his dad does everything to save him. The very-very end was even worse and felt like some random TV movie ending.

Though The Darkness wasn't the worst film, it felt like a retread of a movie I've seen many, many, many times before.

The Quiet Ones Movie Review – Kind of Based on a True Story

Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: April 25, 2014
Rating: PG-13
Director: John Pogue


Joseph Coupland is a college professor who believes that there is no such thing as the paranormal and that science can explain everything. He shows a film that seems to indicate a child who is the victim of possession. After showing his class what he captured, he claims that he can identify a medical condition/mental illness that would fully explain every symptom of a so-called possession.


Coupland brings Brian, one of his students, out to an old manor home. He plans to work with a young woman named Jane and identify which disease led others to think she was possessed. He introduces Brian to his two assistants and the patient. Jane claims that everything odd that happens to her or around her is the result of a doll named Evey. Coupland thinks that by doing a series of experiments on the young girl that he can definitively prove that possession doesn't exist.


Concerned about some of the things he saw Jane do, Brian decides to do some research on his own. He learns that a young girl named Evey has telekentic powers and the ability to set fires with her mind. She was part of a cult that died when a fire broke out in a house. All of the members and Evey herself all died. Brian then decides that she must really be possessed. Both sides must then fight to prove whether she really is possessed or if she's just crazy Evey kills them all.


The Quiet Ones had a good premise, but it wasn't really a me kind of film. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with films set in past decades, and I even have a soft spot for the 70s. I couldn't stop pointing out all the furniture, decorations, and clothing that I loved. There was just something about this movie that I couldn't get into while watching. The movie was plodding at times, and it felt a lot longer than it actually is.


The real standout of the movie is Olivia Cooke. Cooke is probably best known for her role on Bates Motel, but it took me about halfway through the movie before I realized who she was. She really does a good job of channeling a completely different character. She also had some good chemistry with Sam Claflin, who played Brian. I've only ever seen him in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, so I wasn't sure what to expect. He's clearly in good shape given that he occasionally looked like he might burst out of his button up shirts, which made it hard to buy him as a geeky/nerdy guy. I did, however, have an easy time buying that he would care about what happened to a girl he just met.


The Quiet Ones also did a good job of tying up the beginning of the film with the later part of the film and showing the connection that the professor had with the original case. It's just hard to believe that someone would deny something so much. I also enjoyed some of the experimentation scenes. It reminded me a lot of the history I read as a psychology undergraduate.


This all makes it sound like I liked the movie but I really didn't care for it. The Quiet Ones was just a little too slow and lacked the excitement that you would expect from a possession flick.

Insidious Movie Review – "It's not the house that's haunted. It's your son."

Runtime: 103 minutes
Release Date: April 1, 2011
Rating: PG 13
Director: James Wan


Renai (Rose Byrne, Devil) and her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson, The Conjuring) move into a new house with their children. Their son Dalton points out that they don't have any pictures of his dad when he was a kid, which Renai thinks isn't odd. It doesn't take long before strange things begin happening in the house. Renai sees dark shadowy figures, hears odd noises, and eventually gets attacked by one of those ghosts. She convinces Josh that they need to move immediately, but the ghosts of the old house follow them.


After talking to Josh's mom Lorraine, Renai learns that she went through something similar when Josh was a child. Dalton slips into a coma that no one can explain, and Lorraine convinces her that it must be something supernatural and suggests that her friend can help. Elise comes for one visit and instantly realizes that something is wrong. She reveals that Josh once had the ability to astral project himself and that Dalton can likely do the same thing.


Elise also explains what happened to Josh all those years ago. Lorraine began seeing the ghost of an old woman in every photo taken of him. The woman's hand kept getting closer and closer to him, and Elise basically hypnotized him to make him forget. She believed that the woman wanted to possess him, and when he couldn't use his special skills any more, the woman disappeared. Though Josh never remembered his abilities, he never liked having his picture taken after that. With Elise's help, Josh agrees to go into the spirit world and bring back his son.


I don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but I really didn't like Insidious the first time I saw it. There were so many good reviews floating around at the time that I assumed it had to be really great. I sat down to watch it with my roommate, and we both looked confused when it ended. Neither of us thought it was very good, and we both wondered why it got such great reviews. After hearing people talking about it more than two years later, I decided that I had to have missed something. When I rented it, he gave me that look, but after we watched, we both had to admit that it was pretty good.


Confession time: I actually watched this twice in the last few weeks. Once when we rented it that night and once again before I sat down to watch the second film. A review for that one will be up shortly.


There is something that is just generally unsettling about the movie. When Renai walks outside and hears the music playing before seeing the figure in her home, I almost jumped out of my seat. It doesn't help that Tiptoe Through the Tulips is one of the creepiest songs ever recorded. Insidious just has this really dark mood that leaves you wondering what will happen and realizing that anything can happen at any time.


So many modern horror movies try to force scares, which leaves me angry and annoyed. Paranormal Activity, with its clear lack of anything happening until the last few minutes, is a good example of this. Insidious is the type of film that lets you know that a scare can pop up at any moment. You find yourself sitting on the edge of your seat and just waiting for the next moment that will make you jump.


Insidious is a good example of a film that you should watch after the hype dies down. There are some films that reviews pump up so much that they can't be nearly as good as you expect. Once I sat down and watched this without the reviews in my mind, I found it much more enjoyable. I doubt I will ever say that about The Conjuring though...