I love this movie so much

Crappy film

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The struggling British film industry commits another blunder with this highly predictable horror film, produced with part funding from the French who now probably regret their decision. I can't say that this film will do much for cultural relations as it is really a major disappointment from the beginning. I had been meaning to catch this at the cinema and never did, now I know why. The lame and clichéd antics never for one single second add up to anything other than overwhelming boredom and the overall result is that you are left feeling that you've seen it all before, and if you're anything of a horror fan like me then you will have. First off the film attempts to appeal to the teen audience with a group of foul-mouthed youngsters having sex, taking drugs and doing all of the other things that teenagers supposedly do. Sadly the cast is a largely uninteresting bunch with only one or two half decent actors in there. The rest just woodenly say their lines without any conviction and make no impact at all.Most of the faces are unfamiliar with only a couple of exceptions to hook in something of an audience. First we have Joe Absolom, a guy who had a role on popular British soap EASTENDERS a few years back; but I don't remember his acting being this bad back then! Absolom is given a fairly dramatic character to contend with but his efforts are hardly noteworthy. Now, remember how old British B-films back in the '60s and '70s used to have imported American stars to appeal to the American audience? They've done the same thing here with the appearance of former child star Lukas Haas (WITNESS), now a gangly twentysomething who enjoys playing with a video camera (for no other reason than to recall THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT). Although Haas gives only an adequate performance he still turns out to be the best actor in the film.The stupid plot concerns the oh-so-predictable antics surrounding a ouija board séance that gets out of hand. An unseen djinn is summoned and proceeds to wreak havoc by…killing off the teenagers one by one. A good opportunity for some imaginative deaths and gore, you might think? Sadly not. The deaths are skimmed over, major characters disappear only to later be found in elevator shafts, etc. The idea of an ancient djinn as a monster has already been done in the superior WISHMASTER and besides which the budget doesn't stretch to any special effects (other than some cheap snake eye morphing stuff), so instead one of the teens gets possessed and we're left trying to figure out which one.Although this film is shot well, the direction is poor (first-timer Marcus Adams really needs to try harder and stop messing around) and the editing is hopeless, just random scenes strung together in a sequence with no idea of time frame or anything. My favourite bit is a suspenseful moment where Lukas Haas is trapped in a dark house with the monster, but it's quickly and predictably over and the film once again goes downhill from there. The finale is yet another of those tired "twist ending" clichés we all know and hate. Only sadists need apply for this uninteresting talkathon.

I got this movie in a four pack creature feature from wally world that had a discount for a movie ticket on it. So my expectations going into this movie weren't very high.The acting is okay. The actors seemed to take their job seriously, save for the dude with the long hair. Direction is competent. The special effects are conservative but done well when they appear. Costumes and setting are very good. The background music is good, but the radio and club music is generic house pop typical of the early 2000's, making the movie seem rather dated; although that doesn't tend to bother me. It's the movie script and story itself that is the downfall of this movie.I read that there were six writers of this script. Six? Really? The way it was written, it seemed like a college horror movie project with a big budget. While the actors did their job, the way the characters were written was typical and banal.Like Wishmaster, it takes a cursory understanding of non-Western mythology and makes it appear scary and evil. A middle schooler could write the same kind of "oooh, bad spirit comes to the material world to kill and cause chaos" plot line. While it could have had potential, there is nothing interesting or clever about this movie, which is sad because it was so professionally put together.5/10 stars.

Saw this when it was released and I didn't think all that much of it. Thought it was quite poor. I hadn't seen it since, until now and I didn't find it as bad as I last remembered. However there are no pretensions that it's your typical run-of-the-mill, forgettable little post-scream British horror flick outing. Almost like a dark supernatural slasher, as a evil entity (Djinn - fire spirit) possesses a human body and goes about killing the college friends who were involved in summoning it through a Ouija board. That who it possess is kept hidden until the film's climax, as red herrings are thrown up and back-stories are revealed. The main problem I had with it were the characters themselves… quite an unlikeable, bland and indistinguishable bunch of players. Surprisingly the ones which might have seem important in some shape to carry it (the few sympathetic turns with some sensibility) were killed off early and this actually made it unpredictable it what order they would dwindle down to. The typical traits are there; false build ups, reckless decisions, surprising revelations to keep the story moving, roaming shadows, distracting noises, characters finding out the truth to only be killed, ghastly shocks with flowing blood, the killer POV shots and a cheap lasting jolt to close up shop. Director / co-writer Marcus Adams' escalates some suspenseful frights and paces it well enough, but still its slick and flashy techniques are systematically vanilla. Special effects are efficient (sped up visuals and CGI) and the simmering score heightens the danger with its heart-racing cues. The performances are okay focusing on a hip young British cast (Hass' the exception) with the ladies (Marsha Thomason, Lara Bellmount and Melanie Gutteridge) standing head over heals over the boys (Lukas Hass, Ale Newman, Joe Absolom, James Hillier and Mel Raido).

There was a point - as the film was starting - that I felt that maybe I had had low and unjustified expectations of this film over the last couple of years: forget the bad reviews and box-office sales at the time of its release, and instead concentrate on the actual film itself. After pressing play on the VHS, this rather confused and quite frankly stupid reason of thought was quickly diminished after the first ten minutes or so had passed by.I won't go into the story much (it does exactly what it says on the tin, except it doesn't scare or entertain) as there isn't that much of a story, and what there is of it feels like a contrived mess that looks like it was thought up by an arrogant 15 year-old who thinks they're a genius (but they're NOT). Most of the film seems to consist of each character walking about in the dark for a bit, and then getting killed. No real scares to speak of, although the crap-looking student nightclub was a bit of a fright I can tell you.