“This is gonna be the best student film of all time.”
This movie absolutely sucked, make no mistake. It’s a low budget horror movie that didn’t work within that budget well. The special effect makeup was oftentimes distracting from the story, to the point where it probably would have been better to go without it in some instances. It’s okay to have limitations! You just have to be aware of them. Same goes for acting, if you don’t have enough range then sometimes it’s best to just stick to what you know (or for them to get new actors)… So much preachy dialog without it actually really saying anything and you can’t just toss in heavy subject matter and hope the movie will suddenly have depth. That isn’t how it works! This was an oddly Christian film while also being the furthest thing I’ve ever seen or heard from Christianity. Incredibly unfortunate (for me to have watched this).
We open on two (2) friends reading a three (3) card Tarot spread. Eva is the spiritualist while Sara is clearly a born-again Christian. They are picked up in a hearse (sweet ride) by their friends Joey and Marcus. Joey (wearing a t-shirt with a bird skull) is giving off mad Sid from Toy Story energy. Marcus works security at the city morgue so they are going there for the night to film a movie/documentary. They all go along with Eva’s spiritual bullshit but when it comes to her claiming to talk to ghosts they are all skeptical, so tonight is about her proving herself to them (but mainly Joey). There is a bet but the stakes are things we (the audience) don’t really know or care about, so let’s get to the spooky stuff, shall we? After a quick tour, including the freezer where Sara almost pokes a dead guy (but Marcus tells her to not to because it has bacteria(?)), they settle in the coffin viewing room to do their Seance. Just like the last movie, the rule is that they cannot let go of each other’s hands. Eva thinks she is sensing a dark energy but Joey says it’s all a bunch of bullshit and breaks the circle which gets Eva low-key attacked, though she is more worried about Joey, who she thinks has the psychic gift as well. Marcus goes to talk to Joey and we find out that Joey is very troubled, he’s cutting again (something he did in his youth) and is hearing voices (which he’s worried is a mental disease). Joey had already gone off on the group before the Seance and told them religion and ghosts were fake but now he is also high on weed and embalming fluid, so… Yeah…
They all meet back up but Joey is still being an insufferable asshole so Eva says that if he really wants proof she will do another Seance. They perform the second Seance, and, OF COURSE, Joey breaks the circle (again), and, OF COURSE, Joey gets possessed… It’s so dumb. He palms Marcus and Eva on the forehead and they both fall to the ground seizing up and foaming at the mouth, then Joey rips his shirt in half. Huh? In what universe was that necessary? He then attempts to rape Sara, before Marcus just sort of “gets better” and pushes Sara out of the way. It is instantly clear that possessed Joey is going to break Marcus’s neck but I’m gobsmacked because we are only half an hour in and there’s still another hour left! So Marcus dies, surprising no one (1) but Sara. Eva finally gets up, decks Joey with a chair which knocks him out, and then girls attempt to escape but the malevolent spirit they summoned has somehow hacked the mainframe… Are you serious? They go and tie Joey up, put Marcus in the freezer, then just wait. Joey wakes up, largely himself, and is pissed off about being bound, he wants to know where Marcus is. The girls finally work up the courage to tell him what happened but it isn’t until Eva retrieves Marcus’s body from the freezer to show Joey that he believes what happened. Joey then allows Eva to hypnotize him in order to try and get the evil spirit out of him.
The evil spirit is very evil and is quite mean to the girls, they try to make him leave but he is content on staying. They switch to Christian bible tactics. Also, the evil spirit that is possessing Joey can still control things from far away? It somehow causes a scalpel to go through Eva’s hand (Sara instantly informs her it’s infected… How would you know what, Sara?) They get the scalpel out, try some Christian prayers over Joey, burn a cross into his chest, and then Sara gets her leg broken somewhere far from Joey, again by the evil spirit’s powers. And it is randomly cutting to possessed Joey just sort of pulsing in his seat but it kind of looks like he is quite literally getting off to the girl's pain (if his hands weren’t bound I might believe it was true). Sara has great screams of pain while Eva sets her broken bones, then they keep trying to help Joey but he unveils a secret… That Sara had either an abortion or a miscarriage. Eva asks why Sara never confided this information in her and Sara says it was in part because she was ashamed and in part because Joey was the father (Eva and Joey had dated briefly, but Sara and Joey were just a one (1) night stand). Eva is so sweet to her friend at this moment which is good because it’s all you can be when a hidden truth like this is revealed. Around this point, though, it felt like the movie just kept happening to me. I don’t know how else to put it. But I was enduring it. The girls came back to Joey (again) but he caused Eva to pass out then he started to lick Sara all over the face which somehow caused her entire face to explode in blood? Eva basically drags Sara out of the room and there are these fake teeth prosthetics on Sara’s cheek to try and make some sort of illusion that we are seeing through her cheek and into her mouth… But it is so clearly on top of her cheek? I just… I’m at a loss here, I would say I am grasping for straws but this movie lost me about thirty (30) minutes in when the first thing that possessed Joey did was rip his shirt in half. I guess we needed some sort of sexuality in this movie and they certainly didn’t have that budget for breasts, hell, the last film we watched only had enough cash for one (1), so, sheesh.
Also, how, and why did Sara’s face explode? I know she was licked, but possessed Joey made Eva pass out (twice) and she’s largely fine. Sara tells Eva that she’s dying and you can die from serious facial trauma but, I am so perplexed as what the fuck is even going on at this point. There’s ten (10) minutes left in this movie, a fair chunk of them have to be dedicated to credits, so, where the fuck are they going with this? And do I actually care? Sara makes Eva promise that she will save Joey, but earlier Eva promised that nothing bad would happen to Sara… And Sara just spat up a bunch of blood and died… So… Yikes. Eva is holding dead Sara, crying, when possessed Joey appears beside her. They end up fighting in the chapel and Eva holds her own!. Dunking his head in the holy water weakens him so much that she is able to choke him out. But this kills Joey… Eva transfers the evil spirit into a rat and then she bites its head off like Ozzy Osbourne did to that bat. The movie ends with Eva stumbling out of the morgue and then we watch a bunch of rats milling around in the basement. Was meant to imply that the evil spirit went into a different rat and that Eva didn’t actually kill it? None of the rats acted in an intelligent or an evil way, though, so it just seemed like they were showing rats for no reason but to waste my time even more. Fuck this movie.
