It's Halloween night and a group of college students decide to spend it in the closed, and badly cordoned off, Santa Mira Hospital. The hospital is rumoured to be haunted, but no one has ever survived a night there in order to describe their encounter before. Or, so the urban legends say...
Feeling brave, the group head in and soon find that perhaps the rumours are true!
A movie with a terrible name, I wasn't exactly expecting much, and while it's quite an amateur production in many ways I found myself actually enjoying it. I watched with a friend, which is usually a good way to make a bad movie entertaining. It's not one to give you nightmares by all means, but I did find a few scenes to be quite promising.
The premise of the film is hardly inventive, but Ferrante has added in some bulk in trying to give the ghosts a sad and abusive history. While this is hardly a film I'd watch again, I would hasten to add that it's got some good sides to it.
The scenery is spot on and the camera work is excellent for B-movie-land. The characters, although your typical 'unlikable horror fodder', are portrayed relatively well. It's certainly nowhere near as wooden as some films I've seen recently.
The ghosts tend to pop up in the background a lot in a fun Scooby Doo kind of way, and there's a lot of 'jump' attempts, some more successful than others. The effects are my favourite kind, mainly props and prosthetics, and are perfectly passable considering this film wouldn't have enjoyed a large budget.
There is, of course, the obligatory dead dog scene for you animal lovers out there...
M. Steven Felty does an excellent job at being the ghost, and has an almost Robert Englund creep factor about him that verges very much into the Freddy Krueger territory.
A film with a lot of potential but let down with some of the primary points of story telling, it's worth a try, but don't plan on being scared.
[Image: Kismet Entertainment Group]
Don't be fooled, however, it's nowhere near as much fun as Dog Soldiers!
Hani
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