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Pretty simple and straight forward plot; man takes woman to an abandoned haunted asylum to do some drugs and have a little sex. Girl sits in chair, disappears and of course the man is accused of murdering said girl and locked away in an institution for blaming it on a chair. An old-fart psychiatrist takes, the patient as well as a group of young psychology students to conduct an experiment...Then all hell breaks loose, been there done that.
I was honestly looking forward to this movie, since the trailer made it look like it was going to be a solid supernatural flick that wasn't a remake of an Asian movie. Unfortunately the movie didn't turn out as good as I thought it would be since it is definitely not what you'd expect from the concept.
Firstly this is a self-aware movie, so yes that means constant references to horror movies and regular jabs at the genre and the fans. The character Nick West narrates the movie from start to end, in which he is basically telling us the story of what happened, and for some reason they decided that in the movie they needed to regularly pause what was going on so Nick could make a joke about it.
"See. I told you I'd get her out of her shirt."
"What happened there was like something out of Hellraiser, but then again. That's why you're watching this, isn't it?"
While the constant pausing of the movie does get annoying after awhile, the narration does serve a purpose that isn't made clear until the end and of course the end comes with a twist. Yes, you read that right, a twist ending. Undoubtedly the twist will piss off a lot of people and understandably so, since it is intended to seriously fuck with viewers (still playing on the self-aware theme, including having Nick insult the audience and horror fans).
Because of this gimmick that the movie uses to tell the story, it's hard to know if the flaws in the movie are their on purpose or from bad directing. (I'm betting on intentional.) The characters in here are very cliched; the doctor who has other intentions that helping a patient, the young female psychology student who believes the patient is telling the truth and wants to help him, the cynical male student who everyone calls an asshole, the sexy eye candy student, and of course the anti-hero Nick who everyone thinks is a murder but will save the day in the end. Everyone plays up their character like we've all seen before and occasionally does take it over the top, like I said though hard to say if this is intentional or accidental.
Don't worry though, while I wouldn't consider the movie gory (For me, gory consists of decapitations, spilling of innards, severed limbs, etc.) but there is plenty of blood here, so those of you who are looking for an R rated ghost/supernatural flick will be pleased. Then of course the demon itself, they say demons through out the movie but you really only get to see one, which is actually a very slick looking demon. A combination of Death and Ridley Scott's Alien, which constantly has flies buzzing around it wherever it goes. I didn't find the movie to be all that creepy, maybe because I was busy being annoyed, but they use the demon very effectively and the settings help to create a very creepy mood that might just hit the right keys with certain people.
In the end, I was disappointed with what I got especially since I'm not into self-aware movies at all. Although the movie is alot more clever in terms of executing this theme rather than abomination known only as "Scream". It is a decent movie, nothing I'd consider great but far from bad, plenty of blood and an excellent creature concept and a very nasty, mean spirited ending that I believe makes it worth checking out. After it's all over though, how good it is will be determined by whether or not you liked the very strange twist.