Rating: B-
Dir: Paul Boyd
Star: Olivier Paris, Bill Moseley, Jade Chynoweth, Lin Shaye
This is a slice of somewhat meta-horror, taking place during pre-production on a movie directed by the ferociously irascible Max (Shaye). She makes life hell for her PA, Jasper (Paris). The film centres on a seance, and at the request of the lead actress, Jasper is tasked with arranging a real seance so she can experience one. The medium is Felix (Moseley), and the location will be a former orphanage, since abandoned for more than seventy years. There’s good reason for that. Whether or not Felix is a genuine psychic, the spirits which are trapped in the house are very real. They’re not happy about it either, as Jasper and the film-makers are about to find out.
It does take a little while to get to that point, beginning with Jasper meeting Felix while he’s unofficially scouting locations. He returns to the set, only to be berated by Max for going off without permission. Shaye is flat out awesome, a complete bitch whose last fuck was given long ago. Really, after seeing her, no pissed-off spook holds much in the way of terrors. I’d have been quite happy to watch her stomping around the set, yelling at people for ninety minutes. Although poor Chris, who has spent time on film sets with directors of a demanding nature, was quite triggered by all this. I might even use the word “shook”. Anyway, Lin Shaye is a horror legend. Fact.
Once the seance kicks off, Max is actually the first to be affected. Not much of a spoiler there, since Chris had been wishing a brutal fate on the character, virtually since she showed up. However, possessed, undead, or whatever it is that Max becomes – and the film is kinda vague on the details – she is still probably close to the film’s most interesting character. The only rival might be The Grog, played by Greg Deimer. He’s the film within the film’s horror superstar, veteran of a slew of movies with titles like The Grogfather (tag-line: “Don of the Dead”) or Night of 1000 Grogs. He comes across somewhere between a professional wrestler and a has-been rock star. Probably shouldn’t refer to himself in the third person though.
It is the characters which keep this ticking over. because there’s nothing special in the plot. It’s your basic “haunted house with a dark past”. Executed competently enough – there are some good make-up effects, and effective use of a severed head. But it has almost nothing which would come close to counting as a surprise. Fortunately, anchored by Shaye and Moseley (though I couldn’t help imagining Bill Oberst in the role), this is an engaging piece of work that’s more fun- than terror-oriented. Indeed, this could potentially even be PG-13: outside of Max’s language, certainly. Unusually, this didn’t impact my enjoyment excessively. Stick around for the end credits, and a walk through The Grog’s filmography, complete with posters. I’d not mind seeing a few of then.