Review: Fifteen-year-old Emma Evans is like any other teenage girl; she thinks that her parents don´t understand her. She longs for independence and a life free of family ties and responsibilities and she is prepared to do anything to achieve it. But one day she will be forced to face up to the consequences of her actions. Life seems to be carrying on as normal, until one day Emma starts experiencing frightening fits. Her parents are convinced that her problems are either medical or psychological, but when doctors´ tests are unable to draw any conclusions, the family is forced to look elsewhere for answers. It all started off as a bit of fun, Emma never really believed it, but the truth is there is something dark and sinister within her, and it won´t take long to surface.
For the most part I am not a huge fan of possession films and find most of them to be overly boring and quite lame, it could be the fact that like others The Exorcist was the first possession film that I ever saw. Now do I think this film falls in the category of another lame Exorcist ripoff or does it reach to the level of The Exorcists, well I think this film lays right in the middle of the 2 because it does take alot from other possession films, but at the same time you also get a twist that makes up for some of the lack of originality. Now I will not say what the twist is, but I can say I personally have never seen it done in a film like this. The first thing I can say that bothered me after watching the film was the DVD artwork, yeah I know it's a minor gripe but what irritated me was the fact that the girl who is the center of the film is not on the cover, she is in a small picture on the back of the DVD which I found to be a little mis-leading.
Now as far as the cast of the film goes I really thought about everyone was great in their roles, but didn't care much for the actress playing Emma. When she became possessed all she reminded me of was a pissed off emo girl with white eyes. For some people she will be absolutely terrifying, but personally she didn't frighten me one bit. This film also in ways did what others that I have seen before have shamelessly done and that is boast that one of the stars of the film is horror icon Doug Bradley (Hellraiser Series), see he is in the film, but not as much as you would think. He is only in the film a few times many during the flashbacks of a previous exorcism that he was apart of, not like the back cover states when it says "her parents summon a priest (Doug Bradley) to help out the girl." because it is not Doug Bradley as a priest who is summoned it is actually Stephen Billington who plays as Christopher.
Overall this was an alright film that did a have a good twist, but not much else than that. I can honestly only recommend this to fans of the possession sub-genre. I would rate this film a 2 out of 5!
-Daniel "Damnation" Lee
Director: Manuel Carballo
Genre: Horror
DVD Release Year: 2011
Theatrical Release Year: 2010
Time Length: 101 mins.
Company: IFC Films
Website:
www.ifcfilms.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment